


Phantoms of the Past

by QuirkHamlet



Category: Metallica
Genre: Angst, Denial of Feelings, First Time with a guy, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-11-13 19:37:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11192007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuirkHamlet/pseuds/QuirkHamlet
Summary: That’s the fate that you have to accept as a small, local band. No matter where you play, no one’s ever there to see you, they’re there for a bigger band that’s going to play later. This was the case that night and I was fairly certain that this was going to be the case every night until our band inevitably fell apart. Not that we were that good anyway, just a bunch of skinny nineteen year old kids with band shirts and fake bullet belts.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Rockfic.com

“This is our final song!”

The statement was met with no reaction from the crowd whatsoever. If you could even compare a somewhat full bar to a crowd... People watched us with disinterested faces and we continued to play anyway. Of course we did, as if we had a fucking choice... 

That’s the fate that you have to accept as a small, local band. No matter where you play, no one’s ever there to see you, they’re there for a bigger band that’s going to play later. This was the case that night and I was fairly certain that this was going to be the case every night until our band inevitably fell apart. 

Not that we were that good anyway. Someone would always fuck up at some point during a show and our material wasn’t really great. We didn’t even look like a metal band, just a bunch of skinny nineteen year old kids with band shirts and fake bullet belts... 

Despite all that, I didn’t let those negative thoughts show in my voice. I did my best to imitate aggression and enthusiasm, as I always did. I looked to the right and saw Cliff headbanging as if this was the last time he would ever be allowed to touch a bass. He always did that, no matter how small the audience was. He could be playing in front of three people or ten thousand, that didn’t change anything to him.

I envied his pure passion for music, because even though I mostly felt the same way, sometimes I did dream about making it big, signing a record deal and playing in front of packed stadiums. I wanted recognition and acceptance. Something that we would certainly never get while playing in local bars and barely being paid as much as we spent on the gas to get there.

Cliff’s energy was the complete opposite of the sight on the left. Dave’s playing was precise as always, but his face seemed almost bored. The crowd’s disinterest obviously annoyed him and he made no effort to hide it. We all knew why Dave came to these shows in the first place- to get drunk. He didn’t care about the band or our music, his main purpose was to get wasted, pick up a chick and probably get into a fight.

His attitude annoyed us, but it’s not like we could tell him something and risk causing a temper tantrum that would leave us without a lead guitarist before a show, so we kept our mouths shut and only gave him shit if he got us all in trouble for something. 

Behind us Lars was pounding on the drums without a care in the world. He made mistakes left and right, but it didn’t seem to bother him, the guy looked like he was just having genuine fun. I always found it odd. After all, he was the one who got his ass over here all the way from Denmark to start a band, got us all together and even managed to get our music recorded in a demo, but he seemed the least worried about the fact that no one gave a shit about us in that bar.

Well, except for one guy who caught my eye from the very beginning. He was around our age, extremely skinny and pale, had long, curly hair, wore a band t-shirt of some sort and had large, dorky looking glasses. His appearance wasn’t what made me notice him though, it was the fact that he kept his attention on us during the entire performance, looking genuinely into our music and nodding his head along with every song.

It might be pathetic, but I was grateful for that one guy who actually listened. Somehow it made this entire thing feel a little less pointless, even if just as frustrating.

We finished the song to the sound of weak, watered down applause, collected our equipment and walked off the tiny stage. For some reason Dave suddenly looked absolutely pissed, but I just decided to ignore it. He was always unhappy about something, asking why would just make things worse. 

As we were loading our stuff into a van in a dim alley, he practically threw his guitar at us. Cliff was the first one who couldn’t take it anymore.

“What the fuck is your problem tonight?” Dave turned to him and angrily pointed at the bar’s back door.

“That is my fucking problem! Did you see what happened there? It was pathetic! A fucking radio would get a bigger reaction than we did!” Cliff continued to carefully load Lars’ drums into the van, seemingly unaffected by Dave’s yelling.

“Well what the hell were you expecting? That we’ll start a band and a year later people will be chanting our names in some arena?” 

“No! Or fuck, maybe yes, but I certainly wasn’t expecting this!” 

He kicked his amp and started walking away from our van and the bar. Lars rolled his eyes and bent down to see if the kick didn’t do any damage. It was Dave’s amp, so he could do whatever he wanted with it, but it was still important to our overall sound.

“Where are you going?”

“To get drunk somewhere, so I could forget your ugly snout, Ulrich!” Lars flipped off his back and lifted the amp into the van.

When we finally finished loading our equipment in angry silence, the three of us walked back to the bar. No one seemed to notice or care that we were the same guys who were just on stage not even an hour ago. This wasn’t exactly the rock star lifestyle that I imagined...

We got ourselves a table and Lars immediately went off to get us some drinks. I slumped down in my chair and sighed.

“Yeah right, as if someone will sell him alcohol...” Cliff chuckled and started drumming his fingers against the table.

“You know Lars, he’ll bitch and whine until he’ll get his way.” I couldn’t help but smile slightly myself, because he was right.

“Yeah, I suppose...”

We continued to wait. The bar got a bit noisier, it probably meant that the ‘big’ band of the evening was about to walk out. Suddenly I felt like following Dave and getting as far away from that bar as possible. Rejection is an ugly feeling... 

I kept looking around the bar without a purpose until I saw the same dorky guy from before who was actually listening to our performance sitting at the bar. He looked up and met my eyes. I smiled at him, it was the least I could do to show gratitude for not making me feel like a complete piece of shit up there.

Suddenly he got up and started walking towards us. After fighting his way through all the people facing the stage, he finally approached our table.

“Uh... Hi. I just wanted to say that you guys were great. Probably one of the best bands I’ve heard around here.” 

The guy’s soft, but at the same time gravelly voice surprised me. I don’t know what I expected him to sound like, but this wasn’t it. Cliff turned to look at him too and gave him a friendly smile.

“Thanks man, we really appreciate it.” The guy awkwardly stuffed his hands into his pockets and cleared his throat.

“So... Yeah, I guess that’s all I wanted to say, you guys are awesome.” He was about to turn away and I wanted to stop him somehow, but thankfully Cliff managed to do it faster.

“Hey, do you maybe wanna hang out with us? Our guitarist ditched us tonight, so there’s a free spot at the table.” 

He seemed genuinely surprised by the offer, but soon a bright smile spread across his face. This boyish crooked grin made his entire face light up and I found myself smiling too.

“Yeah, that would be cool.” He sat down at our table and Cliff loudly whistled to get Lars’ attention, who was still waiting at the bar. 

“Lars, order another beer!” He quickly nodded and turned away again.

“Oh... I don’t have any money.” Cliff just waved his hand at him dismissively. 

“Don’t worry about it. As I said, our guitarist ditched us, which leaves us with some extra cash.” The dorky guy seemed a bit embarrassed, but nodded anyway.

“Thanks.”

During the small pause that followed I finally mustered up some courage to speak. What can I say, I just wasn’t great when it came to... Well, communicating with people.

“So what’s your name?” The guy looked up at me and gave me a shy smile.

“I’m Jason.” 

Jason. It felt much more appropriate to call him that than “the dorky guy”. He didn’t even look that much like a dork, it was just the glasses...

Cliff outstretched his hand at him for a handshake.

“Nice to meet you Jason, I’m Cliff. That small and angry person at the bar is Lars, the ginger asshole who left is Dave and this right here is James.” He nodded his head my way. “Don’t expect him to talk much, he’s scared of people.”

“Am not!” 

Cliff chuckled and I could clearly see him whispering ‘He is’ to Jason, which made him laugh. Jason’s laughter had a nice ring to it... Before I had time to respond in any way, Lars came back with a victorious smirk on his face and four bottles of beer in his hands. He quickly glanced at Jason and gave me and Cliff a questioning look.

“Who’s this?” I took a bottle from him and plastered a fake smile on my face.

“It’s Jason, our new drummer.” Lars handed Jason the last bottle and shook his hand before flipping me off.

I chuckled and took a swig of my beer. It felt extremely refreshing after all the singing I did that night. Jason suddenly turned to Cliff with a curious look on his face. 

“Sorry man, but I just have to ask... Where did you learn to play bass like that?” Cliff opened his mouth to answer, but got interrupted by Lars’ mocking voice.

“He had professional lessons...” Cliff gave Lars an annoyed look, but Jason didn’t seem to care, he looked genuinely impressed.

“Really? That’s awesome!” Cliff chuckled and took a sip of his beer.

“If you say so... Do you play anything yourself?” Jason shyly looked down at the table and nodded.

“Yeah, bass and guitar, also some piano. But I’m nowhere near as good as you guys are.” 

“Tell that to all those people over there...” Jason glanced up at me, looking slightly surprised and gave me an encouraging smile.

“Most of them are probably here for that glam metal band that’s going to perform later, they don’t know what good music is.” His enthusiasm was somewhat infectious, I couldn’t help, but smile back at him.

“Are you in a band?”

“No, not yet. But I’m planning to find one soon.” Cliff smirked and dropped his hand on Jason’s shoulder in a friendly manner.

“Well you’re on the right path my friend, because you made the wise decision of playing bass. Bass players are rare and good bass player are even rarer, so bands are on a constant lookout for one. Any moron can learn how to play guitar and a chimp could play drums, playing bass is an art.”

Lars was in the middle of downing his bear when Cliff said that and released a displeased sound into the bottle. Everyone just laughed and he rolled his eyes. Finally he wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

“Drums are the heartbeat of music, bass is for dudes who are too slow and dumb for guitar. No offense Jason, but this is a prime example.” 

He pointed at Cliff who smacked his hand away, as if it was an annoying fly. Lars obviously didn’t mean it, Cliff was the most musically gifted in the band and everyone knew it. I looked over at Jason again who was watching the entire exchange with a smile on his face.

“What about singing? Do you sing?”

“Uh... Kinda? I try to, but not much comes out of it.” 

I simply nodded and went back to my drink. Lars snorted with laughter and slapped me on the back, almost making me spill the beer all over myself.

“Watch out Hetfield, he might just take your place.”

Instead of saying anything I just gave him an angry look. That stupid, grinning face really made me want to start each day with going outside and raising my middle finger in the general direction of Denmark. 

I was taken out of my thoughts by Cliff’s voice.

“You’ll have to excuse me gentlemen, Corinne’s already here.”

I followed his look and saw a tall girl with black hair and a wide smile on her face waving at us from the bar entrance. Another girl walked in after her and they both went to the bar. Cliff stood up and went over to them. I turned back to our table and saw Jason giving me a curious look.

“Who’s Corinne?”

“Cliff’s girlfriend.”

“Oh.”

“Also the reason why we can’t properly hang out with Cliff anymore, he keeps running off with her...” 

There was a bit of bitterness in my voice. Cliff was my best friend in the band and I missed simply sitting down with him and talking about music or life (depending on the amount of alcohol that was involved) for hours.

“He at least has a girlfriend, Het. I don’t remember the last time you picked up a chick while we were out. Keep this up and people might just start thinking that you like to take it up the ass.”

Lars said it completely casually, but I felt my cheeks burning. I wasn’t gay, I just... Sometimes I found myself looking at guys the same way I would look at girls. And the fact that the idea of kissing another guy wasn’t grossing me out kind of scared me. 

“Shut the fuck up...” Lars snorted again and nudged my shoulder.

“Look Jason, he’s blushing. I guess I struck a chord...” 

Jason awkwardly smiled and looked down at his beer. His reaction was a bit odd, it seemed like the joke made him uncomfortable. I swatted Lars’ hand away.

“Not all of us are sluts like you. You’d fuck this beer bottle if its neck wasn’t too wide for you.” Lars raised his eyebrows with a grin.

“Jealous much? Here, check this out...” He stood up from the table and started walking towards Cliff, Corinne and her friend at the bar. “Hey, Corinne! What’s up? Will you introduce me to your friend?”

The girl looked at Lars from head to toe and gave Cliff a questioning look. He leaned down and said something into her ear which made her let out a short laugh as she shook Lars’ hand, introducing herself. Lars briefly turned back to us with a smirk on his face. 

I rolled my eyes and turned back to Jason.

“What a fucking idiot...” He chuckled and I couldn’t help but smile as well.

“Is it always like that with you guys?”

“No... Not really. We give each other a lot of shit, but it’s usually in a brotherly kind of way. Maybe except for Dave, he goes a bit crazy when he’s drunk, but other than that it’s nothing serious. You learn to push someone’s buttons when you live together...” Jason raised his eyebrows slightly.

“You all live together? Like, the entire band? That’s pretty cool.” I laughed.

“Yeah, we all rent a house. Lars calls it the Metalli-mansion... It’s a lame name, but whatever. It can be pretty cool to live with your band sometimes, I guess... Mostly just annoying though.” Jason smiled and started spinning the beer bottle in his hands.

“I see...” There was an awkward pause. I cleared my throat, but didn’t have anything to say either. The ‘long awaited’ band started getting their stuff on stage and we both just watched them for a minute. “Do you guys play here often?”

“Uh... I wouldn’t say often. You know, once in a while.” 

I didn’t mention that most of our gigs took place in that bar though. It was fucking embarrassing, especially because Jason seemed to have a pretty good opinion about us. For some reason...

There was another pause. It was that weird feeling when you genuinely want to talk with a person, but don’t really have anything to say. I don’t know why, but Jason just attracted me for some reason... Not necessarily in THAT way, I simply didn’t want our conversation to end.

“So how did you get into metal?” 

I was one step away from talking about the weather, but not quite there... Jason probably thought so too, he smiled and pushed up his glasses. The motion was weirdly endearing. 

“Well... My older brother would always listen to metal in his room and that’s how I heard it for the first time. I really dug the sound and soon started borrowing his records. Bands like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Motörhead and a bunch of other stuff blew my mind. Those guys are so fucking incredible...” His eyes lit up as he was talking and I smiled while listening to him, because I knew exactly how he felt.

“You’re into Motörhead?”

“Yeah, absolutely. There aren’t many bassists who play with a pick and Lemmy’s one of them, so he’s pretty much a hero of mine. I know that it sounds kinda silly...”

“No! Not at all. I totally get it, Lemmy is fucking amazing.” The other guys would always just roll their eyes at me when I talked about how incredible Lemmy is, so it was refreshing to talk with someone who was on the same page as me.

We continued to talk about music and realized that our tastes were damn near identical. Jason appeared to be an easy guy to talk to, he was incredibly nice and funny once he got a bit more relaxed. I could relate to him in a way, it was hard for me to break the ice with people too, that’s why I was always seen as ‘the shy kid’.

The glam band finally started playing and we had a blast just making fun of them. I’m not saying that their music was bad... it was terrible. They had more synthesiser in their songs than guitar, their singer sounded like a cat being strangled and they looked ridiculous, all covered with makeup and glitter.

Our conversation was eventually interrupted by Lars who came up to us with Corinne’s friend by his side. I had to give him credit where credit’s due, the fact that he picked up that girl was impressive. She was gorgeous and didn’t even care that Lars was about half a foot shorter than her. On the other hand, Lars is about half a foot shorter than pretty much everyone, so...

“Guys, we’re going to a party in Cindy’s friend’s house, wanna come?” 

He casually threw his hand around the girl’s, who was apparently named Cindy, shoulders. The position was kind of awkward, because it looked like he could use a small ladder. I turned back to Jason.

“What do you think?” He gave me an apologetic look. 

“I probably shouldn’t... I have a flight tomorrow morning.”

“A flight?”

“I don’t live in California yet, I’m staying at my friend’s place and I gotta go home tomorrow. I will move here someday though...”

“Oh...” This somehow disappointed me. It’s not like I was already making plans about how we could hang out together, but... I kinda was. 

“So are you coming or not?” I glanced at Jason and considered it for a second, then shook my head.

“Nah, we’re staying.”

“Your loss dude. The van’s on you.” Lars dug around in his pocket for a second and tossed me the car keys.

“What about Dave?”

“Fuck Dave! That motherfucker can get home however he wants.” 

With that he turned away and awkwardly led Cindy to the exit. Cliff and Corinne waved at us from the bar and followed them.

“You should’ve gone with them, I’m not much of a company...” I furrowed my eyebrows and chuckled.

“You’re kidding, right? And you should see Lars when he gets smashed... I’m much better off with you.” Jason smiled and I realized that making him smile somehow made me feel good. “Hey, I have an idea. Wanna come to our place and jam? I don’t think I can take any more of this shit.”

I pointed at the stage where the glam band was attempting to perform a weird, disco-ish version of a Van Halen song. Their singer definitely didn’t have a good enough voice for it, to put it lightly. 

Jason followed my look and laughed at what he saw there. One particular attempt at a high note made him scrunch up his nose and I found it to be weirdly cute. I quickly glanced away from him as he turned back to me.

“If you’re going to drive me home later?”

“Sure man.”

I threw all the cash that I had in my pocket on the table and we both walked out into the cool night air, leaving the sound of those guys actively trying to kill music behind us.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My body froze when I felt his warm and soft hands with callused fingertips on mine. It was like a jolt of electricity went through both of our bodies. Jason seemed to feel it too, because he quickly looked up at me with slightly frightened eyes and immediately pulled his hands away, looking very uncomfortable.

I led Jason to our van and we both got in. I didn’t really think about it beforehand, but as we both sat down, I got a bit embarrassed about its state. It wasn’t cleaned very often… Or at all to be honest, so there was trash all over the dashboard, the seats were ripped in a few places and the floor was littered with cigarette butts.

Jason didn’t seem to mind though or at least he didn’t let it show. He instantly turned around to look at our instruments in the back.

“You guys have some pretty sweet equipment, especially the guitars. Is that a real Gibson Flying V over there?” I turned around and fondly looked at my guitar that was safely sitting right next to Dave’s.

“Nah, it’s a fake one. There’s no way I could afford the real thing, but this one sounds damn well if you ask me.” Jason chuckled lightly.

“Yeah, I agree. The other one’s impressive too. It belongs to that guy who left, David right?”

“Dave. That’s actually one of the reasons why we hired him, he had some pretty solid gear.”

Jason simply nodded and looked back at the instruments for a moment. It seemed like he was considering something. Finally his eyes were back on me.

“It’s none of my business, but… It kinda sounds like you guys don’t really like him? Why’s that?” I smirked to myself. What gave it away?

“We do… When he’s not drunk. But the dude has a massive drinking problem, so that’s not very often. He’s an incredible guitarist and all, but more often than not his behaviour is a pain in the ass. We’ve been thinking about replacing him if this shit keeps going…” Jason listened to me with a curious look on his face, but he obviously had nothing to say to that. I chuckled nervously and shook my head. “Sorry about unloading our problems on you.” He gave me a small smile and turned back to sit straight in his seat.

“Don’t worry about it, I asked.”

There was not much else to say, so I started the car, turned on the radio that was still working in this dumpster on wheels by some miracle, and drove off.

On our way we talked some more about music, then the topic changed to other things. For an example, I learned that Jason grew up on a farm in Michigan. I couldn’t really hear it before, but when he mentioned it, I did notice that there was a bit of an accent present in his voice.

It just added to his already fascinating character. I couldn’t really explain it, but Jason seemed kind of unique to me. I only knew the guy for a few hours, but I felt like I could talk to him about anything.

Normally I wasn’t this trusting when it came to new people, but there was just something different about him. He didn’t judge me, he simply listened and told me his point of view. That made me feel… safe while talking to him. If that makes any sense…

Eventually we reached the shabby looking little house that I currently called home. That feeling of embarrassment from before came back. It’s not that I wanted to make an impression on Jason or anything, but if I did, this small building with an unkempt front lawn and a fence that was practically falling apart around it definitely wouldn’t have done it.

I drove the van into the garage and Jason helped me to unload all the gear. It was pretty fascinating to watch how gentle and careful he was with the instruments. I joked about it and that made him blush. As much as I didn’t like to use that word, he was adorably shy.

When we were done I grabbed my guitar and we finally walked inside. I led Jason straight to the living room, not wanting him to see how messy the rest of the house was. Not that the living room was any better, but the stuff there could at least be called a ‘creative mess’ with a bunch of instruments and sheets of paper with lyrics and notes scattered all around it.

Jason curiously looked around the room and I awkwardly scratched the back of my head.

“Uh… There was a bit of a creative process going on here before we left…” He chuckled.

“Yeah, I see that. This place is cosy.” It was my turn to laugh.

“Yeah right. Cliff caught a rat here last week, this place is a dump. It’s our dump though…”

That last bit was sincere. No matter how crappy this house was, it felt more like home to me than any other place I’ve lived in. Even my parents’ house… Especially my parents’ house. Not after the divorce.

I quickly shooed those thoughts away and turned my attention back to Jason who was now curiously looking at the sheets of paper on the floor.

“You can take that black bass over there in the corner and plug it in. It’s Cliff’s spare, he won’t mind you using it.” Jason quickly looked up at me, looking slightly startled by my voice and nodded.

“Yeah, ok.”

I turned around and headed to the kitchen. There was a mountain of unwashed dishes in the sink, but I just ignored it like all the other residents of this house obviously did and opened the fridge.

It had an almost full box of beer along with a few empty ones, half a pizza, a frozen hot pocket and a Coke in there. I could also remember Lars buying a box of cereal that should’ve been in one of the cupboards, but there was no milk, so it was pointless to search for it. Home sweet home… Shit, I hoped that Jason wasn’t hungry.

Suddenly I heard the static noise of something being plugged into an amp, so I quickly took out two cans of beer and went back to the living room where I found Jason sitting in an armchair with Cliff’s bass in his lap.

“Hey, wanna beer?”

He shook his head which made his curls fly all over the place. I didn’t know why I noticed such an oddly specific detail, but I kind of wanted him to do it again.

“No thanks.” I opened both cans anyway and set one of them on the coffee table.

“Okay, I hope you can live with knowing that this delicious beer is standing here and getting all warm, stale and disgusting…”

Jason rolled his eyes slightly, but smiled anyway as he got up and walked over to the table where he picked up the can. In the meantime I took my own guitar, put it on and plugged it in.

“So what do you wanna play?” Jason set the beer back on the table and wiped the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t know, let’s just improvise and see where this goes.”

I couldn’t help but smile at his answer. I liked his spirit… Sometimes the other guys got a bit too technical for my liking. They wanted to write everything down, so they wouldn’t forget any good riffs and only played with the intention of putting something on the album.

Sure, that might’ve been the smart thing to do, but sometimes I just wanted to play and let music carry me away. It was an escape for me from all of life’s problems, a way for me to express my emotions when no words could describe how I felt. You don’t stop every few minutes to write stuff like that down.

We started playing and I could instantly see that Jason would probably agree with me. His face seemed concentrated on what his fingers were doing, but at the same time he was headbanging and letting the melody flow through him.

For such a shy guy he sure had a lot of passion for music. I wasn’t the one to talk about shyness, but still… It was kind of mesmerizing to watch, to be honest.

A bit too mesmerizing, because for a second I completely stopped paying attention to what I was playing and my pick clumsily went through completely wrong strings. The guitar let out an odd sound and it snapped Jason out of his hypnotic state. I quickly muted it with my palm and jumped right back into our riff.

He raised his eyebrows slightly as a warm smile spread across his face. I felt myself blushing. The last thing I wanted was to fuck up in front of him…

“Sorry…”

Jason shook his head dismissively and looked back the fretboard on his bass while changing the melody into something else. Great, he thought that the other one was too difficult for me…

It was nice that he didn’t comment on it though. If I were playing with the rest of the guys, I’d have all sorts of jokes flying my way by now. Jokes and guitar picks… That was the kind of simple kindness that made Jason so appealing.

I quickly picked up on the new riff and started playing it faster, challenging him. He didn’t look at me, but I could see a small smirk forming on his lips as he started adding fills to the bassline, making my playing sound basic and clumsy in comparison.

You could call me a lot of things, but ‘a quitter’ wasn’t one of them, so I took his challenge and started changing the melody myself.

We had this small battle for a while, our smiles growing wider and wider with each added level of difficulty. Eventually Jason was the first one who couldn’t take it anymore and burst out laughing. I stand by my words, his laughter had a nice ring to it…

The noise from our guitars came to a halt and Jason reached for his beer. I raised an eyebrow at him. So much for not wanting it…

“This was fun. Ready for round two?” He quickly swallowed the beer, so he could answer me.

“Sure. But I just wanted to ask you… Who wrote all this stuff?”

He gestured his hand that was still holding the beer can around the room, making me look down at all the papers with lyrics scattered on the floor. Some of them scrunched up, a few even torn into pieces, but most untouched and just carelessly tossed on the dusty carpet.

“Uhh… You know, we all work as a band and try to contribute as much as we can…”

I nervously chewed on my lip, trying to come up with a way to answer his question without really answering it. Jason gave me a knowing look and I realized that I was screwed.

“So… Basically you do?”

There was really no point to lie to him. Maybe except for sparing myself some embarrassment… But he already saw where I lived, things couldn’t get much worse than that.

My eyes darted away from him before I could stop them, more out of a habit than anything, and I nodded my head, defeated.

Jason looked back at the lyrics with renewed curiosity.

“Can I…?”

I looked back at him and saw him giving me an expecting look while pointing at a sheet of paper right by his feet.

My mouth remained sealed. I was being torn between quickly collecting all the papers and setting them on fire, so no one could read that embarrassing shit ever again or allowing him to read them, because I honestly wanted to hear his opinion.

Meanwhile Jason probably mistook my silence for an agreement, because the next thing I knew, his bass was leaning against the armchair and he was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed and looking through them.

I didn’t really know how to react to that or to the criticism that would undoubtedly follow, so I just stood there and watched him for a second, nervously clenching my fingers around the guitar’s neck.

The lighting in the room wasn’t exactly great, so Jason was holding the paper close to his face.

A silly thought that he probably shouldn’t be tiring his already weak eyes like that crossed my mind. I quickly shook it away. What did I care about it, I wasn’t his fucking mother…

Eventually I decided that standing there and staring at him was a little weird, even if Jason didn’t seem to care, so I took off my guitar and plopped down on the couch where I could sit and stare at him. Because that wasn’t weird at all.

My fingers kept nervously drumming against my knee while I was waiting for his response about what he read.

I tried to guess what it would be, based on all sorts of little emotions that went through his face. Hardly noticeable smiles, slightly furrowed eyebrows and small nods whenever he finished reading a full song…

But it was useless, I was one hundred percent sure that he was going to hate them anyway.

After what felt like forever Jason finally turned to look at me with a friendly smile on his face.

“I think these are great. Especially this one…”

He quickly rummaged through the songs that he read and handed me one of them. I took the yellow-ish piece of paper from him and groaned quietly.

“Fuck, not this one, it’s terrible…”

I started scrunching it up in my palm, already regretting that I allowed him to read them. Jason quickly reached out and covered my hands with his.

“Dude, no!” My body froze when I felt his warm and soft hands with callused fingertips on mine. It was like a jolt of electricity went through both of our bodies. Jason seemed to feel it too, because he quickly looked up at me with slightly frightened eyes and immediately pulled his hands away, looking very uncomfortable. A weird feeling of disappointment came over me… “I mean… It’s your song, do whatever you want with it. But I really like it, I think you guys should definitely keep it.”

Unable to keep my eyes on him I chose to look down at the paper instead. My fingers slowly unclenched and I straightened it out.

“Thank you...” Jason didn’t seem like he was going to answer that and I didn’t want any more awkward silence, so I kept talking. “Me and Lars came up with this melody just a few weeks ago and I thought that it was kinda cool, so I ended up writing some lyrics for it.” He raised his eyes, looking surprised that I wanted to continue with this topic.

“Oh… Does it have a name?”

I chuckled and that immediately made Jason’s face brighten, putting us both more at ease. Why were our hands touching such a big deal anyway? It was stupid…

“I suck at naming things, so I was thinking about simply calling it Whiplash, because it’s a word that keeps repeating itself throughout the entire thing. I don’t know really… If you have any ideas, feel free to share them.” Jason shook his head.

“Nah, I suck at naming things too. But Whiplash sounds good. Simple and catchy.” I ran my eyes through the lyrics and had to agree with him there, Whiplash was probably the most suitable name and it didn’t sound half bad.

“You really think that it’s worth something?” Jason gave me an ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ look.

“Of course it is! I mean, at least in my opinion… I’m telling you, you guys have something special going on here, you could become big someday.”

I just had to laugh at that idea… Us making it big. In my fucking dreams maybe. Jason’s optimism was kind of contagious though and it was nice to dream about shit like that once in a while.

In the meantime he quickly glanced at my guitar and turned back to me with a smirk playing on his lips. It didn’t look very good… I mean, not that he didn’t look good, it’s just that the sudden gleefulness in his eyes wasn’t promising any good. Not that his looks mattered to me… Nevermind.

“You said that this song has a melody?” I realized where he was going with this and dropped the lyrics sheet on the floor again.

“No.” Jason let out a short laugh.

“Why not?”

“Just… No.” He quickly got up on his feet, took my guitar and outstretched it towards me.

“Come on, I wanna hear it. We can sing it together if you want to?” I ignored the guitar and just gave him a curious look.

“I thought you said that you don’t sing?” Jason shrugged.

“I said that I’m not really good at it, but I can try.“

Did I want to sing with him? Oddly… Yes. Very much. All of a sudden I was more than willing to play my crappy song just so I could hear his voice.

Reluctantly I took the guitar, picked up the paper from the floor and handed it to Jason. His fingers started nervously folding the corners as he read through the song again, getting familiar with the lyrics.

“You’re ready?” He cleared his throat and nodded.

“Yeah.”

“Keep in mind that this was written with drums, so it might sound shitty with just me playing the…”

“James.” The way he said my name made me shut up. It rolled right off his tongue in such a satisfying way… “Just play it.”

We exchanged a smile and I started playing the intro. Jason instantly started nodding his head to the rhythm and it seemed like he was just itching to pick up a bass and accompany me. I wouldn’t have minded, but the song simply didn’t have a bassline yet.

Finally I started singing and Jason, not knowing when the lyrics were supposed to start, joined in a second later.

His voice caught my attention immediately. That growl with melodic undertones to it was mind-blowing. I barely refused a temptation to stop singing myself, just so I could hear him better. It kind of reminded me of Lemmy and that was probably the biggest compliment I could ever give something.

My eyes remained on Jason throughout the entire song. He glanced up at me a few times and met my gaze with a shy smile, but then quickly looked down at the lyrics again.

Hearing him sing it actually made me like the song a bit more. He put so much energy to it that made my lyrics shine in an entirely different light.

I was almost sad when it was over. The sound of my guitar slowly faded away and I simply looked at Jason for a while. He was willing to look at anything in the room except for my eyes and that upset me way more than it should’ve.

“I guess this wasn’t bad, huh?” Jason smiled and nodded, still looking at the sheet of paper in his hand. His discomfort bothered me for some reason, I didn’t want him to feel that way. Before I could think about what I was doing, I reached out my hand, placed my fingertips under his chin and gently made him look up at me. “Hey, you did great.”

Jason just stared at me with wide eyes. They almost seemed frightened and I quickly lowered my hand, not wanting to cause him any more distress. It was probably a bit too late for that though…

“Uh… Thanks?” I nervously ran my fingers over the strings and gave him an apologetic smile.

“I’m just being honest.”

Jason pushed up his glasses and looked to the side. There was silence for a while. Unbearably uncomfortable silence. Finally he cleared his throat and placed the lyric sheet on the couch.

“You know, I should really go.”

He started standing up and that made a bolt of panic run through my body. I didn’t want him to leave… Not now.

“No, wait…” I caught his hand and he stopped, looking at me with those same somewhat frightened eyes. He was probably expecting me to continue and explain why I stopped him, but honestly, I had no idea. Doing it was my first instinct and then my mind turned completely blank. “I…”

Jason sat back down, looking confused. My hand was still holding his.

“Yes…?” My brain was desperately searching for something to say, but found nothing.

“I… Fuck.”

I’m not sure what led me to do what I did next. It was almost like my body was working on autopilot. I leaned forward and gently pressed my lips to his.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite the fact that I had no idea why or how this happened, this was easily the best I’ve ever felt. Somehow I felt free. For the first time in my life I wasn’t hiding anything, wasn’t keeping a secret. I was living that secret. The secret that I wasn’t exactly like everyone else with a person who showed me that there was nothing wrong with it.

Relief suddenly washed over me. Like some sort of tension that was building up inside of me for years finally left my body. The feeling was... liberating. 

Jason’s breath hitched and he flinched slightly, but to my surprise, he didn’t pull away. His soft lips tasted a bit like beer and it all felt way better than it had any right to feel.

After a few seconds that felt like an eternity I pulled away. Jason kept his eyes shut for a bit, then opened them and gave me a surprised look.

His expression was hard to read, so I wasn’t even sure if he enjoyed what just happened. All of a sudden I felt like I fucked up really badly…

I let go of his hand, allowing him stand up and leave if he wanted to, but surprisingly he didn’t. He continued to sit there and look at me, which made me feel like I was starting to blush.

We were still really close to each other, so I shifted a little further from him, thinking that maybe a bit of distance between us would make him more comfortable.

“I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have done that.”

Jason bit down on his bottom lip, considering something. The action was completely innocent from his side, but to me it was the most attractive thing ever at the moment. I instantly wanted to kiss him again, just so I could bite down on that lip myself…

Jason’s quiet voice instantly brought me back to reality.

“Don’t be. It was… I mean, it’s not that it wasn’t good, but… I thought that you aren’t into guys?”

This question frustrated me so much, because I kept asking myself the same thing and I simply didn’t know the answer. Was I into guys? There were times when I could swear that I wasn’t. I would see a hot girl and that would make any doubts about shit like this leave my head.

But then there were other times… Times like this. Especially this time with Jason. I… I wanted him. There was no other way to put it. And a normal guy who’s into women wouldn’t feel like this.

Jason was looking at me and patiently waiting for an answer. Here was that kindness again… He didn’t rush me, even though he had every right to demand for an answer after what I’ve done.

“I… I’m not, but… I guess I kinda am. I like girls too though. Shit, I don’t know… I really shouldn’t be telling you all this.” Jason quietly looked down at my hand and hesitantly ran his fingers over it.

“No, it’s ok. I’m… kinda like that too.”

That made my heart start beating faster. I never really knew anyone else like me… Growing up you would either hear about ‘normal people’ or ‘faggots’. There was no in-between.

These conflicting emotions about who I prefer always made me feel like a freak. Someone who doesn’t belong with either side. That’s why Jason’s confession was so shocking and yet, at the same time calming to me. I finally wasn’t the only one.

He was looking at me with expecting eyes, waiting for my reaction, but I didn’t know what to say. Instead of useless words I just moved closer to him and connected our lips again.

This time Jason didn’t stay still though, he started responding. The feeling of his gentle lips and hot breath was making me dizzy. That heat seemed to spread through my body and I wanted more. I desperately needed more.

My guitar was still in my lap and got in the way between us, so I set it on the ground as carefully as I could and fully moved into Jason’s embrace. I wrapped my arms around him, bringing our bodies closer together.

His tongue experimentally ran over my lips. I immediately granted him access and it slipped into my mouth, making me quietly moan. Judging by his hesitant movements, Jason wasn’t really experienced at this.

Not that I was fucking left and right, that was Dave’s role in this house, but I did have a few one night stands with chicks who would’ve fucked any dude with a guitar in his hands. Jason obviously hasn’t and somehow this knowledge only made me crave him more.

I gently pushed him back on the couch and he leaned his head against the armrest while I crawled on top of him. That was a position that turned me on way more than I’d like to admit…

Jason was looking at me through those huge glasses of his, with wide, lust-filled eyes. The glasses caught my attention for a second. Just like my guitar, they were getting in the way, so I reached out, slowly took them off, folded them in my hands and placed them on the ground.

That made Jason quickly blink a few times before he looked back at me again. The way he looked without those huge frames on his face surprised me. The guy was absolutely gorgeous… Not that he wasn’t good looking with the glasses, but now his deep blue eyes somehow became even more striking, as lame as that sounds. I gave him a small smirk and leaned a little closer.

“Can you still see me?” Jason chuckled and ran his hands down my back.

“Kinda…” A smile remained on his lips as he closed the distance between us and started kissing me.

Things were getting heated pretty quickly and we were both much less hesitant. The only audible thing in the room was the wet sound of our kiss. Jason’s hands slipped under my shirt, making me shudder and I couldn’t hold back anymore. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to feel him. All of him.

My hips jerked forward and collided with his, making us both moan. The feeling of friction between us overwhelmed my entire body and I did it again. Then again. Eventually I was rapidly thrusting my hips into Jason‘s.

I could feel how hard he was against me and knowing that I made him that way only encouraged me to speed up. We were both panting and desperately grinding against each other, our lips locked in a hot, open-mouth kiss.

I was practically drowning in the warmth and comfort that was his body. Not only in the physical way either, his arms around me gave me a weird feeling of security, reassuring me that what I was doing was okay.

And it was not okay. My entire upbringing and faith was screaming at me that this was not okay, but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t care if I was going to burn in hell for it afterwards, because at that moment I was in heaven.

My hands slid down his lean waist and stopped when they reached the waistband of his jeans. My fingers ran over the buttons there that were holding on for dear life because of how hard he was. I left another soft kiss on his lips and gave him a questioning look.

“Is this ok?” I didn’t need to clarify what was ok, the way Jason gasped when he felt my hand there showed that he understood me perfectly well.

“Yeah…” His voice was somewhat hesitant and it made me have doubts about what I was about to do.

“If you’ll want me to stop at any time…”

Jason hurriedly nodded and thrust into my palm. That helped me to make up my mind. I unbuttoned his jeans and slid my hand inside. Jason’s dick twitched when I touched it and he let out a beautiful moan when my fingers slowly wrapped around it.

“James…”

If I thought that my name sounded good coming from his lips before, I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. The desperate and ecstatic way he said it now made me want to hear it over and over again.

I slowly started working my hand up and down and that made Jason whimper. He was obviously not used to this sensation and that only made me want to please him more. I leaned down to his neck and started kissing it while simultaneously moving my hand faster and making Jason wriggle with pleasure underneath me. 

Despite the fact that I had no idea why or how this happened, this was easily the best I’ve ever felt. Somehow I felt free. For the first time in my life I wasn’t hiding anything, wasn’t keeping a secret. I was living that secret. The secret that I wasn’t exactly like everyone else with a person who showed me that there was nothing wrong with it.

But like all good things in my life, this moment had to turn to shit. The silence was broken by the sound of a door being unlocked. Then the small squeak of it being opened. And then there were footsteps. Neither I nor Jason had time to react to it, we only realized what was happening when it was too late.

Dave was standing at the hallway with a disgusted look on his face. The worst part was that he appeared to be sober enough to understand what was going on.

“What the fuck?!” 

I quickly jumped away from Jason and took a step away from the couch, as if that would somehow make the situation less obvious. Jason quickly got up as well and started buttoning up his jeans. 

“Since when are you a faggot Hetfield?”

I quickly glanced at Jason and it looked like he was in utter panic, looking for where I put his glasses on the ground. I walked up to the couch again, bent down and handed them to him. Only then did I turn back to Dave.

“It’s none of your fucking business.” He narrowed his eyes and glared at both of us, a sneer that everyone who knew him recognized so well forming on his lips.

“Get the fuck out of here and take your boyfriend with you! I don’t want this disgusting shit happening in my house…”

I took a step towards him and despite his attempt to seem tough, Dave still stepped back. The motherfucker knew that I could easily beat him up if I wanted to.

“You can’t order me around, I fucking live here.” His face became even more disgusted.

“Don’t go near me, you freak…”

Anger started boiling inside of me. I would’ve punched him during that moment, consequences be damned, if it wasn’t for Jason. He was quietly watching our exchange thus far, but I guess Dave’s last comment was too much for him and he started heading toward the door.

“It’s ok, I’ll leave…” I glanced at him and saw that his cheeks were red, and his eyes that were once again hidden behind glasses seemed kind of tearful.

“Jason, wait…”

It was too late though, he was out the door. I gave Dave an angry look and he responded with a mocking smile that was just asking to be punched off of his face.

“Come on, go after him, you fucking faggot.”

I clenched my fists by my sides. He was really pushing the limit… I would’ve attacked the fucker if it wasn’t for the fact that Jason was going god knows where in the middle of the night, in an unfamiliar neighbourhood.

With another hateful look directed at Dave that he gladly returned, I wordlessly walked through the door. To my relief Jason didn’t do anything stupid and didn’t run off, he was sitting on a sidewalk by the road. His knees were brought up to his chest and he was looking at nothing in particular in front of him. Just an empty street, dimly lit with a few streetlights.

I walked up to him and sat down by his side.

“Shit, I’m so sorry…” He just smiled sadly and absent-mindedly kicked a small rock that was lying by his foot.

“It’s not your fault. Everything that happened before your friend came home was… nice, I guess. It’s not really the right word, but you know what I mean.”

I nodded. I did know what he meant. The experience was incredible, but it’s not like either of us was going to admit it now that our hearts were beating steadily again and there was no more lust pushing as forward to do stupid shit.

We sat like that for a bit, not really having anything to say, but still enjoying each other's company. It was pointless to discuss what happened inside, it was better to just forget it. The problem was that I didn’t really want to…

Suddenly Jason stood up and dusted off his jeans.

“Can we go now?” 

My heart sank slightly. I really wanted to just spend some more time with him… But I once again kept quiet, stood up and went to open the garage.

The ride to Jason’s friend’s house was awfully quiet except for Jason occasionally telling me where to turn. We both had some stuff to consider though, so I definitely didn’t blame him. Still, I felt disappointed when we finally arrived. Jason’s presence was not like anything I’ve felt before and I didn’t want it to be gone. But it’s not like I had a choice.

The van squeaked as it stopped in front of a cosy looking small apartment building. We both sat in silence and I was honestly just relieved that Jason didn’t instantly get out, just to get away from me and my awkwardness.

I cleared my throat. It was considerably more difficult to speak to him now for a few obvious reasons.

“Look, I’m really sorry about what happened.” Jason shook his head, making his curly hair bounce around.

“I thought we already decided that it’s not your fault?” I let out a short and quiet chuckle that lacked any amusement. The silence continued. Suddenly Jason looked up at me with eyes that seemed almost concerned. “That guy, Dave… He kicked you out. Will you be able to go home?”

The fact that he was actually worrying about my wellbeing seemed kind of incredible to me. A thought that shit like this shouldn’t be happening to such a kind-hearted person crossed my mind.

“Dave’s just as asshole who likes to think that he’s in charge. He can’t kick me out, the house belongs to all of us.” Jason seemed genuinely relieved by my answer.

“Oh… Well that’s good.” Another awkward pause filled with us trying to look at anything but each other. “Anyway, thanks for giving me a ride.”

Jason started climbing out of the car, avoiding my eyes. That same need to stop him from leaving that I felt back at home came back. I wanted to grab his hand or something… But I didn’t do anything. He climbed out and was about to close the door, when suddenly an idea hit me.

“Hey, wait a second!” Jason turned back to me with a hopeful look on his face. I leaned over to the passenger’s seat, opened the glove compartment and dug around in all sorts of random and useless shit for a while, until I found the most random and useless object there. I took out a cassette that had a stamp with our band name on the cover, along with a track listing that Lars hurriedly scribbled on it. I offered it to Jason and he took it, looking confused, but at the same time interested. “Here, maybe at least someone will remember that there was once this small band in California called Metallica.”

Jason flipped the cassette over in his hands and smiled as he looked at it.

“Thanks. You know… Somehow I think that people will remember you guys.” I just had to laugh at his enthusiastic and optimistic tone.

“Why would you think that?” He shrugged, his own grin getting wider.

“I don’t know, there’s just something about you.”

Silence again. But this time there was really no point to try and fill it anymore.

“Well… Bye.” I nodded my head even though saying goodbye was literally the last thing I wanted to do at that moment.

“See you.”

With one last awkward nod Jason finally closed the door and without looking back went into the apartment building. I caught myself staring at its entrance moments after Jason’s figure was gone behind it. It was weird how much of an impression that guy left on me in such a short amount of time.

I shook my head, turned on the engine again and drove off through the dark streets, thinking about what the hell just happened. A small part of me was really fucking sad that I might not see Jason ever again, but it wasn’t like there was something I could do about it. Still, you don’t meet unique people like him every day and the fact that I had to let him go, was tugging at my heartstrings in all sorts of sappy and cheesy ways.

There was really no good side to it, but at the end of the day, at least I had one hell of a story to never tell anyone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In my eyes we weren’t a band anymore. We were... I don’t know what the fuck we were, but our band consisted of me, Lars, Kirk and Cliff. Now Cliff was gone and we were just a bunch of losers who couldn’t let go of their semi-successful little musical act and properly grieve their fallen friend. Not that grieving would bring him back. I knew that I had to let go, to get up, get my ass out there and carry on with my life. But it was hard and never in my life have I felt so weak.

I cracked my eyes open and immediately closed them again, when the bright daylight hit me. That’s what I got for waking up at 1pm, like a complete asshole... My head was killing me and I just wanted to fucking die. I might’ve had a few the night before... A few litres that is. And boy did it feel like it. 

After about thirty minutes of self-pity in my unwashed sheets, I decided that enough is enough and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. The wooden floor was cold under my feet and I released a small groan. I was acting like a spoiled child, sure, but at that point I had enough money to allow myself that.

I had enough money for a nice house and a nice car. A nice life in general if you don’t count alcoholism, inability to hold a relationship for longer than a few months and the death of a friend that made me think about taking my own life.

We buried Cliff only two weeks ago, but it felt like forever. I was not used to being away from him for so long and I didn’t want to get used to it, but it wasn’t a choice. He was taken away from us and there was nothing we could do about it. I couldn’t stand how lost and helpless that made me feel...

Even more so, after I heard the news from the record company. ‘You are to find a new bass player within the following few weeks or we’re dropping you from the label.’

I felt sick when I heard those words. Replacing Cliff? We couldn’t fucking replace him. You don’t hear about someone losing their family member and tell them to go get a new one. That’s not how things work.

But the next thing I knew, I was sitting in auditions, listening to some pathetic assholes playing Cliff’s riffs to us, smiling to appear friendly, talking about practicing to seem disciplined, making sure that they got there on time to make us think that they’re punctual.

At the end of the day they all had one major fucking flaw- they weren’t Cliff. And that was the only thing that I wanted or needed to know about them. 

They weren’t tall, long haired weirdos who wore too much denim, smoked weed and were unreasonably obsessed with The Misfits. Cliff was dead and none of them could change that. None of them could replace our fucking brother. 

But we still sat there and listened to them. Because we were fucking tools and we had to. Or at least Lars and Kirk did. Lately I started skipping auditions, because it was pointless for me to sit there. I knew what I thought about those guys before they came in through the door- they weren’t Cliff, they weren’t good enough, next. 

I’m not saying that it was easy for the other guys, but somehow it seemed to be the worst for me. I couldn’t slip on a mask and be all business-like, like Lars and I couldn’t close off into my own little world like Kirk. I just had to sit there and suffer through every second of those auditions. They made me physically sick. 

The auditions and the alcohol that I took up drinking excessively after the accident. Not that I didn’t drink before, but it was never like this. Alcohol made me pleasantly numb, it made my mind wander and allowed me to forget the pain at least for a little while... Until it would hit me with full force the next morning. 

Then I would dull it with more alcohol and that would turn into long and ugly drinking binges. Something I’ve never done before. But I didn’t care that some people would probably call this ‘developing a problem’. This problem made me forget another, much deeper and personal one. Also, to forget those fucking auditions...

Today they were holding another one. I wasn’t there, but honestly, I don’t think that anyone was surprised. They were disappointed in me, I knew that and I hated letting them down, but I just couldn’t do it and deep down they probably understood. Or at least I hoped so.

This day was supposed to be somehow different though. I was called into an ‘unexpected band meeting’. My god did that sound entirely too pretentious... Especially when said in an annoying Danish accent. 

I didn’t know if I should go. Because what was the point? To look at Kirk’s dull eyes as he stared into the distance like he’s been doing ever since the accident? To listen to Lars bitching that we’re a band and we need to make this important decision together?

Fuck that. In my eyes we weren’t a band anymore. We were... I don’t know what the fuck we were, but our band consisted of me, Lars, Kirk and Cliff. Now Cliff was gone and we were just a bunch of losers who couldn’t let go of their semi-successful little musical act and properly grieve their fallen friend. 

Not that grieving would bring him back. Thinking about him at every free minute I had wouldn’t help either. I knew that I had to let go, to get up, get my ass out there and carry on with my life. But it was hard and never in my life have I felt so weak. 

I took a deep breath and rubbed my hands over my face. Today would be a long day, I could already tell. Or at least as long as it can be when I started it at early afternoon. 

Dragging myself to take a shower and forcefully shoving some food down my throat made me feel a little more human-like. I eyed the box full of beer in my fridge, then reluctantly closed it and made myself some coffee. 

You know that you’re a worthless piece of shit when you feel like not getting wasted first thing in the morning is something to be admired.

I sat down with the said cup of coffee in the kitchen and stared through the window for a while. It was fall, so shitty weather was a given. Strong wind was ripping dead leaves off of trees and blowing them all over the fucking place, the trees themselves were becoming more bare and miserable-looking by the minute and it was raining.

Or not raining, I suppose. It was that annoying kind of rain that was mild enough so you would look like an asshole if you walked around with an umbrella, but strong enough to make you wet and piss you off.

Another thing that bothered me about the view through the window was that it was... Well, happening. The world seemed to move on, completely disregarding Cliff’s passing. Nature continued with its regular cycle and people seemed to casually carry on with their day to day life.

Not that I was expecting the entire world to stop and share my grief for a while, but seeing everyone just moving on was depressing. The view through this fucking window was depressing. My life was depressing.

I glanced down at my coffee and saw no steam coming from it anymore. It got cold. Great. No alcohol or caffeine. My look wandered to the clock on the wall. It was 2:35pm. The guys were still at the studio. 

A small pang of guilt went through my sober mind. They were probably waiting for me and I was letting them down. Again...

I sighed, got up and poured my cold coffee into the sink as I went to look for my car keys. Me deciding to stay sober for a day was a reason to celebrate and I decided to do it by actually being a decent person and a friend.

The world seemed to reward my decision by not getting me stuck in traffic on my way to the studio. It was just me, a somewhat clear highway, Lemmy’s voice blasting through the radio and the annoying sound of raindrops hitting the windshield that seemed to be getting louder.

I parked my car in the studio’s parking lot and quickly made my way to the building itself, trying not to get wet. That, like most things in my life, failed. I wasn’t wet enough to justify a changing of clothes, but just wet enough for it to be annoying. 

Pushing the studio door open was relieving in a way. Just a small bit of our old routine, straight from the life that I would never get back.

As I stepped inside, I was expecting to hear voices, but it was silent, except for a quiet ringing of an acoustic guitar. 

I soon saw the source of that sound as well. Kirk was sitting in one of the studio chairs and slowly running his fingers over the strings with that same dead look in his eyes. The guitar was out of tune, but he didn’t seem to notice or care, his movements looked more mechanic than anything.

It was in tune enough for me to quickly understand what he was playing. Orion. Fuck, that hurt... I wasn’t able to even touch Master Of Puppets after what happened. It was just too... fresh. The memories of me and Cliff sitting and composing music for it were too clear.

I swallowed a lump that started forming in my throat. Acting all emotional around Kirk wouldn’t help him, we were already worried about his psychological wellbeing as it was. He blamed himself for what happened. For switching the bunks with Cliff.

It was stupid and we told him that. No one was to blame, except maybe for that fucking driver that allowed the bus to get out of control in the first place, but Kirk didn’t seem to hear us. Remember how I said that he often closed off into a small little world of his? Well in that world it was his fault and neither of us was allowed into it, so we could prove him otherwise. 

Not being able to take in any more of that haunting melody coming from his guitar I cleared my throat, snapping him out of his dazed state and making his fingers abruptly stop. 

“James? What the hell are you doing here?” I chuckled and closed the studio door behind me, leaning against it.

“Well shit, am I not invited?” Kirk returned a sad smile.

“No... No, I mean, it’s kind of weird that you actually came.” 

I just smirked. He turned his eyes away from me and there was a small, awkward pause. I hated how difficult it was for us to talk after the accident. No one else really understood how we felt and we weren’t even able to speak about it with each other.

“So... Where is everyone?” 

The question seemed to make Kirk unreasonably nervous for some reason, but I just brushed it off. His emotions were all messed up and he was a weird guy in general.

“All the sound guys went home and Lars... He’s showing our new bass player around.”

I froze. My mind started racing, but I couldn’t let out a single word. The silence came back to the room, but it was nothing like the one before. It wasn’t friendly awkwardness, it was pure tension.

“Our what?” Kirk lowered his eyes, much like a child who was about to get yelled at.

“Our... Our new bass player.”

Anger. That was the next thing I can remember feeling. It replaced everything else for a second. The confusion, the sadness, the grieving. Everything was taken over by fury and maybe just a tiny bit of disbelieve that they had the nerve...

“What the fuck do you mean ‘our new bass player’? You can’t do shit like that behind my back!” Kirk’s eyes remained directed at the ground, but I saw his jaw clenching slightly and his entire posture indicated that he was getting angry as well.

“Well what were we supposed to do? We had to make a decision if we wanted to stay on the label and you refused to be here when we asked you to.” 

Kirk’s voice was calm, but there was that barely audible edge to it that we got to hear so rarely. His fingers were quickly flipping a pick in his hands, like they always did when he was nervous.

It’s not that his anger wasn’t justified, I could absolutely see his point of view, but I was a stubborn piece of shit who didn’t want to accept change. Not that kind of change at least.

“I don’t want him in our band!” 

Kirk finally turned to look at me, his big brown eyes were begging me to understand. He seemed tired and worn out. This entire situation was taking its toll on him and it made me feel horrible for yelling at him. He was in just as much, if not more pain than I was.

“You don’t want anyone in our band James, that’s the problem. Do you think that this is easy for us? No, but we have to move on. He’s not coming back...” 

His words made me lower my head. In shame, sadness and despair. I hated the fact that he was right. I absolutely loathed it. But he was, I was just not ready to accept it.

“I know...”

Silence. Sweet, torturous silence. It struck me during that moment that this was actually happening and I had no control over it. I could act like a dick and demand the guy to be kicked out of the band, but what good would that bring? In a few weeks they’d find another one. They were all the fucking same anyway... Not Cliff. 

Kirk’s gentle voice made me look up again. His eyes were sympathetic and I braced myself for whatever attempt at cheering me up he would give, getting my fake smile ready. 

“Lars said that you’ll like the new guy. I think you guys have met him before or something like that, way back in the day.” 

That suddenly caught my interest. Replacing Cliff was impossible, that much was obvious, but maybe if the guy was someone we knew, it wouldn’t hurt as badly. 

“We’ve met him? Where?” Kirk shrugged.

“I don’t know, I’ve never seen him before. His name’s Jason. Rings any bells?”

A cold shiver ran down my spine. It couldn’t be... It had to be a coincidence. Because what are the chances, right? A bass player named Jason that we’ve met back in the day, before Kirk was even in the band. That description fit a certain someone perfectly.

My heart started beating faster in my chest and I stood up straight from my comfortable position against the door. I couldn’t let this happen. Or, to be more accurate, I couldn’t let anyone know what already happened four years ago on a dirty couch, in our old, shitty house.

The sudden panic that washed over me must’ve been pretty obvious, because Kirk shot me a worried look and was about to say something, but I quickly turned around and almost ran out of the room.

‘Lars is showing him around’ was my only direction, so I just paced around the entire building like a madman, desperately hoping not to see the person who haunted my fucking dreams for years.

Suddenly I heard it. That annoying-ass voice with a slight accent that I knew so well. Lars was talking to someone, but the person wasn’t responding or at least I couldn’t hear him. I quickly looked around, searching for where the voice might be coming from.

At the very end of the corridor there was a storage room for spare instruments and its door was slightly open. The same one that I told Lars ages ago to stop using, because it was small, badly lit and humid, so not very good for the instruments. As if the little fucker listened... 

I took a short breath and started walking towards it. The voice was slowly getting louder. Now I could hear the responses as well, but the guy’s voice was quiet and got easily muffled.

Finally I reached the door and without allowing myself to hesitate, pushed it open.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was so fucking naive. I thought that what happened was just fuelled by horniness and momentary attraction, and that it didn’t mean anything. What an idiot… One time didn’t change anything, I was still straight, right? It’s just experimentation! Yeah, except it fucks you up in the head so badly, that you can’t even keep a steady relationship going for a few months. Other than that? Sure, just experimentation.

The room was dim, small and cramped with equipment, just like I remembered it. In the middle of it there stood Lars and some other guy. 

Lars was pointing at the instruments and talking about them. Just based on his tone I could tell that he was rambling again and the smallest bit of pity for the person next to him flashed through me, regardless of who he was.

The guy was turned away from me and all I could see was that he was taller than Lars, really skinny and had a mass of curly, ginger-ish hair on his head. Just like him…

They obviously didn’t hear me come in and I took that opportunity to braise myself. I mean, what if it wasn’t him? What if he turned around and it was an entirely different person? I realized how unlikely that was, but fuck, I was desperate. Life, of course, was just too keen to fuck me over for that to happen.

Well, there was only one way to find out… I loudly cleared my throat. In part to get their attention and in part to make sure that my voice wouldn’t be all jittery and nervous when I spoke. I moved past my fear of talking to people after all.

They turned around and my eyes instantly met a pair of slightly surprised deep blue ones that were peaking at me through a curtain of curls. He looked a bit different than I remembered… Even though I suppose I changed too, right?

But he wasn’t a living skeleton anymore, even if still extremely skinny. His hair was longer, making it seem even wilder. His jaw seemed somewhat stronger and manlier, but then again, I guess that went for all of us. The stupid glasses were gone and I was looking straight into his eyes. So ridiculously fucking blue, just like that night…

I hated myself for remembering every single detail about him so well. Everything down to the smallest fucking thing… If I would be any better at drawing, I could make a photorealistic portrait of that motherfucker and that was bugging me.

I would’ve loved to be completely indifferent to seeing him or to not recognize him at all, but if there’s a single person left who I couldn’t lie to, it was myself. I knew who he was. And of course it was him… Jason.

His name was forever engraved into my brain after all those times I woke up all sweaty at night, having moaned it in my dreams. Yeah, I dreamed about him in… that way. That’s how fucked up this entire thing was. I mean, those dreams stopped after a while, but… Yeah.

And now the main reason of my suffering through those years was just standing there and glancing at me curiously, even somewhat shyly. Suddenly a small smile appeared on his face.

“Uh… Hi James.”

Fuck, that quiet, husky voice. I almost forgot how fucking pleasant it sounded, especially when saying my name. I wish I had forgotten…

I didn’t respond or even acknowledge that he spoke to me though, I just stared, as fucking creepy as that sounds. I guess I was just a bit too… struck by the not so unexpected meeting. That made Jason stop smiling and he raised his eyebrows slightly.

In a very sick and twisted way I was glad that he wasn’t smiling anymore. I wanted him to feel at least a fraction as uncomfortable as I felt…

I don’t know how long we would’ve just looked at each other if Lars’ voice hadn’t broken the tension between us.

“Where are your manners, Het? You’re supposed to say ‘hello’. Jesus Christ dude, you look like you just saw a ghost or something.”

He snickered at his own idiotic remark. I finally managed to turn away from Jason and glared at the little fucker, which made him stop smiling. At that moment he must’ve realized that this would not end well.

“Lars, can we talk?”

His eyes quickly darted to Jason, then back to me. I didn’t exactly try to make my voice sound calm or collected and Lars, knowing me, obviously realized that shit could hit the fan real fast if he wasn’t careful. Somehow I had a feeling that shit would hit the said fan anyway…

“Um… Sure?”

He gave me an expecting look, almost pleading me to stay calm. Fuck that, I had a thing or two to say to him.

“In private. Preferably.” I refused to look at Jason, but from the corner of my eye I saw him shifting uncomfortably.

“I’ll just wait outside.”

His arm briefly brushed against mine as he walked past me and I clenched my jaw. The last thing I needed at the moment was to touch him.

As soon as he closed the door behind him, I gave Lars a strict look.

“Not him.”

“Why the fuck not? I thought that you’ll be happy about this, you liked the guy when we first met him back then. You two hung out together and shit.”

Lars really wasn’t helping his case with reminding me of that night, but he obviously didn’t know that. Thank god that he didn’t know that… I defensively crossed my arms on my chest.

“I don’t care what happened years ago, I don’t want him here.” Lars threw his head back and sighed, the drama queen that he is.

“We need a new bass player, whether you like it or not. The label is on our ass, do you not fucking realize that?”

His words only fuelled my anger. I was disgusted by the fact that suddenly the label was more important to him than the relationship between the four… three of us.

“That’s all you fucking talk about, the label! What about us as a band? Maybe we’re not ready for a new bassist? Maybe we need time to heal?” Lars pressed his lips together, suddenly his look was genuinely pissed off.

“Maybe someone needs to move on?” I was ready to snap back at whatever he had to say, but these words made me close my mouth. Any clever retorts were replaced by a strong and urgent need to punch him, but before I could do that, he kept going. “Do you think I like being the one who has to push us to move forward? Do you think it feels nice to act like I’m unaffected by what happened? No, it fucking doesn’t! But I have to do it, because neither you nor Kirk will and this band is all we fucking have! Music is all we fucking know and if this thing falls apart, we’re left with nothing!”

Silence took over the room. I had no idea that that’s how he felt… I rarely knew how Lars felt to be honest, he was not the kind of guy who showed his emotions, he always just kept moving ahead, no matter what.

No answer to his words seemed reasonable, so I just looked down at the ground, cleared my throat and decided to be an asshole all the way.

“Does that mean that you can make decisions for all of us? I don’t even get a voting right in who’s joining the band?” Lars gave me a stern look and crossed his arms too.

“No, you don’t. You had every chance in the world to come here and be a part of this decision, but you chose to stay at home and drown your feeling in alcohol. It was your choice. Jason’s staying.”

I didn’t yell or start smashing stuff, which would’ve been my usual response, especially if alcohol was involved. Instead, I just nodded and walked through the door, slamming it behind me as hard as I could and making the loud noise echo through the hallway.

Jason was leaning against the wall right outside and I realized that he obviously heard everything, but I didn’t particularly care. When he saw me, he quickly stood up straight and took a hesitant step towards me.

“Hey, I thought that we could maybe talk? Because I know that right now you’re probably…”

I didn’t bother to listen to what he had to say and just shoved past him, making him stumble a few steps back. He wasn’t gonna be in the band for long anyway, so I didn’t feel much of a need to regard his feelings.

It did make me feel like an asshole though and that pissed me off even more. Why couldn’t I just not give a fuck about him? Why did I have to force myself not to look back at him instead of just doing it naturally? Why did I even care about him at all?

With these troublesome, pesky little questions in my head I walked out of the building and went straight to my car. The rain was even stronger than before and by the time I closed the car door behind me, little drops of water were dripping down on my face from my hair. It didn’t exactly help my mood.

I turned on the engine and drove off. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but it wasn’t home. I wanted to go home, but at the same time I didn’t. Somehow I just needed that long car ride to nowhere, so I would have time to think. The radio was on, but I didn’t listen to it, instead concentrating on the sound of raindrops hitting the roof of my car and the wet road ahead of me.

The only question running through my mind was ‘Why?’… Why the fuck did he have to come back now, when I was so fucked up? Why did he want to join the band anyway? Why the fuck was I such a shitty friend, band-mate and an overall human being, that I allowed all of this to happen in the first place?

All I had to do was attend the fucking auditions and this would’ve never happened, but of course ‘the important one’ had to be the one I decided to skip. Because fuck my life, right?

Either way, the decision was already made. My only way out was to somehow fix it. I had to get him out of the band and out of my life again. As long as the guys didn’t know anything about what happened, everything would be fine… God, I’ve been telling that to myself for years, but things have most definitely not been fine, even though no one knew.

Or… Almost no one. When the other guys came back home the next day and asked how my night went, I simply told them that I jammed with Jason and dropped him off at his friend’s house sometime along the night. Called him a great guy too. I really had no reason to be mad at Lars for hiring him, did I?

Anyway, throughout my entire sugar-coated story Dave just kept glaring at me with that irritating fucking smirk on his face. I was completely sure that he was going to tell everyone and ruin my fucking life, but surprisingly he didn’t. He never told anyone.

I wasn’t sure why, maybe he was waiting for the right moment to blackmail me or something, but it never really came.

The morning we kicked him out, everything happened really fast. We woke him up, told him that he’s out of the band, gave him some money to get home and that was the end of it. Dave was way too disoriented and obviously had a bitch of a hangover, so he didn’t even react to what was going on.

He just watched us with dazed and reddened eyes as we walked out of his room and slammed the door behind us, finally moving on. Away from his ego, his drunk outbursts and my own constant fucking anxiety and fear of him letting that big mouth of his loose.

It was such a fucking relief to kick Dave out… And I know, it’s a shitty thing to say, he was our friend and our band-mate for a considerable amount of time, we had some good times together, but I… I ended up being paranoid. I constantly kept my eyes on him. I tried not to leave him alone with the other guys. I practically fucking babysitted him when he was drunk, because then he could tell someone without even meaning to. It was better for my mental health to get rid of him.

That same day when we kicked out Dave, we met up with Kirk. He had an audition that was more of a formality than anything else, because we already knew him from before and the four of us went on to record our first album together.

Despite my relief after Dave left, my paranoia never fully went away. I haven’t seen him since the day we left him behind in that hotel, but from what I’ve hear he started his own band that was doing pretty well and that was pissing me off.

I mean, sure, good for him, but with success came interviews and appearances in big festivals. Who knows when he would decide to use his knowledge about me for some cheap-ass publicity stunt? Call me a paranoid, insecure piece of shit, but that was the kind of thing that he would do.

I thought that I’ll have a fucking anxiety attack when he reached out to us recently, for the first time in three years, but it turned out that he wanted to express his condolences about Cliff’s death. Again, making me feel like a jackass for wishing him bad, but I just couldn’t help it. I didn’t trust him and I was terrified of any kind of contact with him. I just wanted him out of my life and out of my mind. Kind of like Jason…

But things from the past just have this lovely characteristic of coming back to haunt me, so of course they both came back at the worst possible time. When I really thought about it, Jason coming back was even worse than Dave. I could bring myself to hate Dave. Not Jason though.

Even after a few years of thinking about this shit way too often, I still didn’t know how I felt about Jason. I wanted to blame him for this whole mess in my brain, but really, it wasn’t his fault. It was already there when I met him, he just stirred it up.

Life was easier when I could pretend that the whole thing just didn’t happen and cling to my public image of a tough, straight guy. I wanted it to stay that way so fucking badly… I guess it was easier than to deal with the fact that I wasn’t normal. That I almost fucked a guy that one time. Or that it was the best I’ve ever felt with anyone, because that dorky looking dude who I met at some bar actually liked me for who I was, normal or not.

I did have a few girlfriends since then, but I never really felt the same way with them as I felt with Jason. Not that I didn’t like them or anything, I wouldn’t date someone if feelings weren’t involved in one way or another, but I never felt completely free with them. They dated the tough guy James Hetfield from Metallica, not some pathetic pussy who was battling an attraction to a dude. 

My feelings about this… issue, I suppose, was a barrier that I never really let them cross and that I sure as hell never crossed myself. Behind it there was the fact that I wasn’t normal and I liked to keep that shit locked away as far as possible.

Obviously it wasn’t their fault, it was my problem, but at the end of the day it was the reason why none of my relationships lasted. I just never felt fully comfortable with the girls I dated.

This shit was constantly eating me from the inside, but I never did anything to deal with the problem. I simply kept telling myself that I can change and that if I hid it long enough, it would go away. See how well that fucking turned out…

I guess a part of it was true, I did change, I became much more confident and outgoing around people. I even heard some kids in the crowd calling me ‘the mighty Hetfield’ a few times, which I found fucking hilarious. If only those poor, little fuckers knew…

No matter how much I resisted it, that small, sick part of me was still there, slowly making me feel shittier about who I am every day. And I don’t even mean all the gay crap, I mean the fact that I was a fucking poser of a human being and I knew it. I put on a mask every time I walked outside.

People usually go to psychologists, or hell, even psychiatrists to deal with stuff like this, but really, what would they tell me? That I’m a repressed bisexual or some shit? Yeah, no thanks. I had more serious problems to deal with at the moment.

We had a tour to finish, the label was pressing us to start making plans about the next album and on top of all that, of course, there was the passing of a person who I considered to be my brother. The range of people who could potentially get my dick hard wasn’t exactly my biggest issue.

On the bright side, even though this term sounded almost cruel at this point, all the shit that I had to deal with made me forget about my little, enormous problem for a while. Then everything just had to come back ten times stronger the second I saw Jason. Because of course it did.

Suddenly it was my main problem. My only problem. The way I felt about him was not okay and I had to do something about it. Preferably something that would push him out of my life again. I just wanted to continue with my charade of being like everyone else, is that too much to ask for?

My thoughts were abruptly cut off as I stopped my car. I wanted to die at that moment, even though on the outside I just let out a bitter laugh. Why did my mind hate me? Why did the world hate me? Why, of all places on Earth, did I drive back to our old house?

The Metalli-mansion. Fuck that name… But I guess I did want to go home deep down, didn’t I? Well here I was. God, so many memories at that place… So many songs written there… That night…

I glanced at the wet sidewalk that was being bashed by huge raindrops. The exact spot where me and Jason sat back then, our sides barely touching and yet still giving us a weird kind of comfort.

I was so fucking naive. I thought that what happened was just fuelled by horniness and momentary attraction, and that it didn’t mean anything. What an idiot… One time didn’t change anything, I was still straight, right? It’s just experimentation! Yeah, except it fucks you up in the head so badly, that you can’t even keep a steady relationship going for a few months. Other than that? Sure, just experimentation.

I sighed and ran my hand through my hair. I knew that I was exaggerating the situation, making it worse than it actually was. People out there battled real shit, like barely affording food to eat or getting evicted. Meanwhile here I was, dealing with my ‘feelings’. That even sounds gay…

But goddammit, I would’ve gladly given away every penny I had if someone could just make me feel like I wasn’t wasting oxygen on this fucking planet.

Taking a deep breath I forced myself to turn my head away from the shabby looking little house that meant the world to me and drove off.

That night any progress that I might’ve made over the years was thrown out the window, because I dreamt about golden-brown curls, deep blue eyes and a raspy voice, repeating my name over and over again, making me hate myself a little more each time.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I set my guitar aside and stood up, walking towards him in a manner that made him instinctively stand up as well and back away a little. “Mention what fucking happened between us to anyone and you won’t be playing in this band, not because you will leave out of common decency, but because there won’t be a healthy bone left in your body...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy... :)

Another morning of waking up and feeling like absolute shit... Don’t you just love those?

I groaned and turned on the other side in my bed, hoping that maybe sleep would mercifully take me back in, but nope. What was I, a lucky person?

Instead my mind got flooded with images from the dreams I had that night and I cursed under my breath. I didn’t have a single dream about him for what felt like a year by then and all it took was fucking seeing him once... 

It’s like my mind was playing tricks on me, torturing me even in my sleep, the one and only place where I could get away from the miserable reality.

I ran my hands over my face and decided that starting my day could help me forget the fucking nightmares. So at an ungodly hour for me to wake up, somewhere around 10am, I rolled out of my messy sheets, threw on the first clothes I could find and dragged myself downstairs. 

I didn’t bother to take a shower or brush my hair that was practically begging for it. Fuck trying to be presentable, I had no one to impress. 

Differently than usual, I already knew what was waiting for me when I went to the studio, besides disappointed faces of course, and there was only one thing that could ease my suffering. 

With no hesitation whatsoever I grabbed a beer from the fridge and went to sit by the kitchen window. It was becoming a habit of mine and even though I hated to be that dramatic, sad guy who’s staring out the fucking window all the time, I couldn’t help myself from coming back there constantly. It had a nice, undisrupted view at the entire street and watching other people’s calm and normal lives unravel was so much simpler than dealing with the fucking mess I was in.

And hey, at least it wasn’t raining today? I think Kirk once said something about searching for positive things in every situation, no matter how shitty it is. So there you go, not a drop of rain. Although the sky was still cloudy and there was a bit of fog, making everything seem somewhat murky. What a pleasant sight first thing in the morning. I’m really not good at all this optimism shit...

Letting my mind wander as usual, I downed the beer in a pace that was impressive even for me and wistfully turned to the fridge again. There was almost an entire box left inside of it. 

A brief, annoyingly pleasant thought that I could probably drink the entire thing crossed my mind. I really could though... Then I would go to the studio and piss everyone off there, leading to Lars kicking my drunken ass out and forbidding me to come back until I was sober. It would give me a few stress-free days. They knew about my binge drinking...

And hey, maybe Jason would see me and be so disgusted, that he’d stop looking at me with those kind, pleasant and shy eyes? 

I actually considered it for a bit. Ruining things even more just for my selfish needs. Boy, did it sound good... But eventually, to my own surprise and a bit of twisted pride, I decided against it. Not for some honourable reasons, that wasn’t gonna happen, but because I realized that the sooner I’d deal with the problem- the better.

I crumbled up the beer can in my hand and went to get my car keys. Drinking and driving... My excuse was that I only had one, tall can of beer. A little booze never killed anyone, right? They should write that on my tombstone.

There was surprisingly little traffic on my way to the studio for the middle of the week and I got there in no time. Not that I was happy about it, but I doubted that being stuck in traffic would help my already cheerful morning mood. 

I made my way into the building and opened the studio door, already preparing my usual, indifferent ‘Sorry I’m late guys’, but to my surprise it was occupied by a single person- Jason. Sitting in one of the chairs in front of the mixing console and playing a bright red, unplugged bass. 

With my luck it could’ve either been him or an intervention about my drinking problem, depending on what mood Satan was in that day.

He raised his head at the sound of the door being opened and his facial expression instantly dropped when he saw that it was me coming in. His eyes immediately darted back to the fretboard and he murmured a quiet ‘Hi’ under his breath.

I didn’t greet him back and just went to the couch at the back of the room, grabbing my good ol’ Flying V and starting to play whatever came to mind. The old piece of junk could barely stay in tune anymore with its loose tuners and completely worn down nut grooves, but there was something about it that just didn’t allow me to get rid of it. I couldn’t be bothered to get it fixed either, but still, there was something to it... Call me fucking sentimental. 

Playing random shit on that terrible sounding guitar kept me occupied for a good amount of time until eventually it didn’t and I started getting annoyed. I wasn’t really sure by what, but with not much consideration concluded that it must’ve been Jason. Sitting there, scribbling something down in his notebook as if he could ever create something decent, pretending as if I didn’t exist... Fucking asshole.

I was also annoyed by the fact that I was stuck alone with him in the first place and had no idea why, so I decided to break the silence. 

“Where is everyone?” My voice made him jump and he dropped his pick in the process. Fucking loser... 

“Uh... Lars said that you wouldn’t show up anyway and they left for lunch. I mean, they probably would’ve left anyway, it’s like 1pm...”

The last remark caught my attention. Was he trying to say something about me being late? Lord fucking help him if he was... cause I was kinda desperate for a reason to get mad at him. 

“Are you trying to call me out on something?”

He raised his eyebrows slightly, seeming surprised, and then quickly looked away again. What a pussy, amirite? Or maybe it’s because I sounded like I was about to punch him in the face, who knows.

“No...”

His voice clearly indicated that he wanted me to just leave him alone, but there was no way in the fucking world that I would do that. What did he think? That we’ll just chat casually and become buddies all of a sudden? Yeah, not gonna happen.

“Don’t you fucking think that you can just waltz in here and start ordering me around. Or anyone for that matter, you don’t fucking belong here.” 

I was expecting him to snap back, to freak out, or hell, just any kind of reaction, but he just continued to sit in that chair slightly hunched over and refusing to look at me. 

He didn’t answer for a while, probably just expecting me to let it go, but I stubbornly continued to stare at him, knowing that he could feel it. Eventually he let out a defeated sigh.

“I get why you’re mad, man... I was fucking shocked when I heard about Cliff, I can only imagine how it is for you guys. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Like a fucking asshole, a complete, utter piece of shit, he just had to fucking sound sincere and regretful while saying that, making me believe every word he said... And I hated him for that just a little more.

“What, are you gonna act like you fucking knew him?” He stayed silent again, lowering his head slightly and making that ridiculous fucking hair of his fall on his face. Not feeling very confrontational, huh? Well we could fix that. “What the fuck are you doing here anyway? What do you want from us?” 

His hand that was already moving over the fretboard again stopped and he seemed to think about his answer for a while. Probably trying to figure out what would get him a little less of a beating. Yeah, right, as if I could even fucking touch him...

“Nothing. I genuinely like this band and being a part of it is kind of like a dream come true for me. I mean... Sure, this is a chance for me to get noticed, to get my foot in the door to the music industry. My current... Or my last band, I guess, wasn’t doing that well. We got signed and everything, but nothing big was happening. Metallica is an opportunity for me. That’s not why I wanted to join though... I just really like what you guys are doing.”

That made a sneer form on my face. Fucking bingo. I got myself a reason to hate his ass and the idiot walked right into it. He was being honest with me and I was going to use it against him... Aren’t I nice?

“An opportunity? So that’s all you fucking want- to get noticed. We’re fucking means for you to get money.” My words finally made him look up and he frantically shook his head.

“No! Fuck no, I’m here for the music, I love what you guys have made so far and it’ll be an honour for me to play what Cliff has written. But you gotta understand that this is also a great chance for me. Hell, it would be a great chance for everyone. Only an idiot wouldn’t use it.” That finally made something click in my head and I no longer had to look for reasons to stay angry at him.

“We’re a fucking chance for you? Cliff’s death is a chance for you?” His look was almost pleading me to understand as he turned more towards me.

“That’s not what I meant to say... Fuck, I mean... Out of all the people I kinda expected you to understand? That night when we met you seemed like someone who’s really passionate about music and who would get my decision. I just wanna be a musician... And we separated on good terms, or at least I thought so, and... Shit, I don’t know.”

My insides twisted when he mentioned ‘that night’. The last thing I wanted was him running his mouth about it...

I set my guitar aside and stood up, walking towards him in a manner that made him instinctively stand up as well and back away a little.

“Mention what fucking happened between us to anyone and you won’t be playing in this band, not because you will leave out of common decency, but because there won’t be a healthy bone left in your body...”

Genuine fear flashed through his eyes for the first time and he visibly swallowed, taking another step back and hitting his bass against a chair, but that didn’t seem to be his biggest concern at the moment. 

I didn’t stop walking towards him though. I was a few feet away from him and Jason’s eyes were wide and questioning at that point. I knew that I couldn’t really beat him up, but for some reason I still didn’t stop getting closer to him. I didn’t want to. Images from my dream flashed in front of my eyes and I... suddenly heard voices in the corridor.

That made me snap out of whatever has taken over me and I retreated back to the couch, not sparing Jason a second glance.

He was still standing in the same spot where I left him when Lars and Kirk came in through the door, chatting about whatever and holding like a dozen boxes of Chinese food in their hands. 

Kirk cheerfully greeted both me and Jason while Lars stopped in his tracks completely, his eyes turning wide as he looked at me. Here we fucking go again...

“You fucking showed up? I’m impressed.” A glare was his only answer, so he kept going while setting all the food down on the table. “That’s good actually, cause we gotta discuss some important shit. Jason needs an introduction of some sort, so I was thinking that we could maybe do few shows down here in California, so all the magazines could write about him and stuff, and then we’d go on with the tour, cause the executives at the label are shitting their pants...”

I only nodded. That seemed to be enough and Lars kept blabbering about something else, most likely some boring band management stuff that we were all blessed that he took care of, not giving two shit that I was no longer listening. No one gave a shit if I was listening, my opinion no longer mattered in the band. I was a fucking drunk who didn’t deserve to have one. 

Not in important matters anyway... Maybe if I behave really nicely some night, they’ll let me decide on what kind of pizza we’ll be getting for dinner. Just maybe. 

“...so that’s why I think we should really start practising again, we’ll need a new set-list too. Het, are you even listening?”

I blinked at him a few times and Lars rolled his eyes murmuring something about talking to a wall under his breath. My eyes darted around the room for a second and met Kirk’s. He was glancing between me and Jason who was back to quietly sitting in his chair, and seemed to be considering something, his eyebrows slightly furrowed.

I was about to ask him what was his problem, but he quickly looked away from both of us and turned back at Lars.

“Hey, maybe a short practice would be enough for today? You know, just so Jason could warm up his feet a little. And the set-list... It could stay the same, really. I mean, we’re all familiar with it, so why fuck things up? Let’s just wrap this up quickly today and go home.”

Thank god for Kirk, have I mentioned that? He definitely picked up that something was wrong, as he usually does, and instead of being a nosey little piece of shit *cough*Lars*cough*, he actually chose to help me out. Thank fucking god for that guy...

Lars gave him a questioning look while showing noodles into his mouth, but ended up just shrugging dismissively and saying that for the first day it didn’t really matter. 

I gave Kirk a thankful look that I wasn’t sure if he caught and got up for the practice. Jason kept glancing at me throughout the entire thing, but I didn’t look at him once. I had a point to make by ignoring him. I just wasn’t sure what it was yet...


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I straightened up again and took another look at the mirror. Not exactly the Mighty Hetfield they all knew and loved. Eyes red and puffy from crying, a running nose, lips slightly parted for quick and shallow breaths to pass through. A fucking mess. A wimp. A pussy. Wait, no, scrap that last one. Calling myself a pussy while thinking about how much I disliked myself was a tad bit ironic, considering the reason for that self-hatred.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, this came out a little depressing...

My lips suck into soft, pale skin that’s covered by a thin sheet of sweat and I could swear that it tastes like fucking honey. I want more of it. More of him. And he’s mine for the taking.

A sharp, weirdly echoey moan rips through the thick, hot air around us, but I’m not sure if it’s mine or his. Not that it matters, pleasure washes over us both and it all becomes a blur. We become one.

The moans get louder and more desperate with each thrust that makes his curls bounce on the white sheets and it only encourages me to go faster, harder. For him, it’s always about him. From the moment I saw him, it was all about him.

I leave marks behind on his neck with each hungry, biting kiss and I’m fully aware of that, but I don’t care. It’s so everyone around us would know that he belongs to me and how proud I am of having him. Why wouldn’t I be?

“James…”

Hearing my name being said in his quiet, raspy voice brings a moan out of me. I would never grow tired of hearing it, it’s the most beautiful sound to my ears. I wouldn’t trade it for all the music in the world.

Thin fingers gently run over my jaw and guide me up again, back to his lips, and I allow him to lead me. His sweet, delicious lips... I kiss him with all the passion and love I could possibly give, knowing that it still isn’t enough. Not enough to keep him.

My hands run down his warm sides as we kiss and land on his hips. Bones are sharply sticking out from his body there and they make me frown inwardly. He’s so thin… He needs me to take care of him. I’ll always be there to protect him.

Eventually I run out of air and have to pull away from the kiss, panting heavily as I lean my forehead against his. He opens his shimmering blue eyes and looks at me, little gasps leaving him every time I push into his willing body.

A small smile plays on his flushed lips as he gently strokes my cheek.

“It’s okay…”

What? Of course it’s okay, what does he mean by that? We’re doing nothing wrong, just giving each other something that we both need. Why would it not be okay?

“I’m yours…”

Yes... Fuck yes. He’s mine, only mine. My one and only source of pleasure and pain. Wait, pain? Why would he bring me pain? He’s too fucking pure for that. He loves me for who I am. He doesn’t judge me. He accepts me.

“James…?”

Yes? Ask for anything, I’ll give you whatever you want. Nothing matters to me more than you.

“Why did you leave me?”

My eyes widen and I freeze. I didn’t… I would never fucking leave him. He’s my only source of freedom.

“I wanted you to go after me and you didn’t…”

His voice starts getting more distant, like he’s speaking to me from afar. I desperately hug him to myself and feel that his body is cold.

I was an idiot, I didn’t know how to stop you, I didn’t know what to say, you never told me that you wanted me to follow.

His eyes start filling with tears and he pushes me away. No, please don’t cry, I’ll fix everything, everything will be fine. Don’t leave…

I try to go after him, to grab his hand, but I can’t move. I watch as he slowly fades away and I can’t do anything about it. Not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t. I don’t know how.

His silhouette completely vanishes and I try to call his name, but not a single sound leaves my lips.

Please come back. I need you…

* * *

My eyes flew open and I took a long, shaky breath. Sweat covered my entire body, trickling down my temples, dampening my hair and making my back uncomfortably stick to the sheets underneath me. I could feel my own fingers digging into my palm through the cover that they were gripping for dear life. I took another breath, this time a more steady one, and forced myself to let go of it.

None of that was what unnerved me the most though. It was the heat in my groin that really fucking bothered me. The hot, hard flesh pressing against my lower stomach and the feeling of pre-cum leaking onto my skin. It made me groan, I wasn’t a fucking teenager anymore to have wet dreams.

My mind was racing, searching for what caused all this mess and then it hit me. The dream. More like a nightmare… Image by image it came back to me and I started feeling sick. Fucking hell…

They were never like this. In the other dreams I fucked him, made him suck my dick or just made out with him, but there was usually no emotion involved other than lust. Definitely not fucking regret, longing, sorrow, need of comfort. 

Well now it pissed me the fuck off. It wasn’t as much the dream itself, as it was the powerlessness about it. I couldn’t do anything to stop it. During the day I could play a straight dude all I wanted, but during the night my own freaking brain called me out on my bullshit and I just had to take it.

That’s what made my fucking blood boil. I grabbed the pillow from under my head and threw it at the wall, the soft, anticlimactic thump that it produced pissing me off even more. Yeah, I know, very fucking mature, but it’s not as immature as clinging to some one-off thing from four years ago.

I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just let go, but that’s how things were and that’s how they would continue to be until I got rid of him. 

I sat up and ran my hands over my face, wiping off the small strands of hair that were stuck to my forehead. That’s when my surroundings caught up with me and I realized that the room was already filled with dim light coming from the window. I couldn’t see the sun yet, but it must’ve been an early morning. It wasn’t usual for me to wake up this early, but that wasn’t my biggest concern at the moment.

My dick was desperately begging for attention, but I wasn’t pathetic enough to jerk off while thinking about him yet, so I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and headed for a nice, cold shower that would put everything back to its place. Well, not my messed up mind, but hey, a man can dream.

Stepping under the ice cold stream of water instantly shocked my body, making my breath hitch, and soon I felt all the arousal slowly going away, but I didn’t turn it off just yet. It was almost like a sick kind of punishment to myself for having thoughts like that in the first place. For not being normal.

Goosebumps covered my skin and I felt my teeth starting to jitter slightly, but I still allowed the freezing stream to harshly hit against my chest. At least it fucking distracted me and didn’t let my mind wander. What’s hypothermia against gay daydreams?

Eventually I had to step aside though and turn off the water, because I couldn’t take it anymore. I was weak, that’s fucking why…

I dried myself off with a towel that felt way too soft and nice for my mood at the moment and went to stand in front of the mirror that hung above the sink. And what a sight greeted me there.

My skin seemed almost sickly pale, there were faint, dark circles under my eyes, my hair was damp and hung around my face in messy strings that were dripping onto the floor. My jaw was covered in a slight, unkept stubble and my chest was oddly reddened from being bashed with freezing water for so long. But overall I just looked… tired.

Not because I didn’t get enough sleep, that was basically a daily occurrence to me, but because I was exhausted from what my life has become. From having to pretend all the time, to hide something constantly. I was exhausted from all the fucking anger and hatred that was inside of me every day, and from the fact that it was unjustified, and I knew it.

I hated Jason, I really did. And I hated fucking Dave. I hated… I hated myself, really. It wasn’t their fault that I was a faggot, and being aware of that somehow made it just a little worse. 

Jason was just a nice and friendly guy who returned my kiss years ago when were just kids, a kiss that I fucking initiated, and Dave was just an asshole who happened to walk in on us at the worst possible time and never even mentioned it again.

The problem was in me. I was the source of all my fucking misery, not them. It all fucking crashed down on me after Cliff’s passing and I no longer had the strength to uphold my image. Not after crying in the middle of a street piss drunk, fucking wailing for Cliff to return. It all became too much.

And again, I was weak. I just wanted these fucking nightmares to end. Not the ones with Jason, no, those were the only place where I felt good being myself. I wanted the continuous string of nightmares called ‘reality’ to end. An ending seemed easier than accepting who I was. Isn’t that a fucking depressing thought?

I sighed and ran my hand through my hair, already feeling a headache settling in. With still trembling hands I reached out and opened the medicine cabinet that was behind the mirror and looked over the few white and clear, orange bottles that were scattered there.

Among them a bottle of Advil for those lovely mornings after a fun night out that left you feeling like your head is being split in half. I took it out of the cabinet and my eyes quickly ran through the label.

“…do not use more than directed…the smallest effective dose should be used…do not exceed 6 capsules in 24 hours…the risk of a heart attack or stroke may increase if you use more than directed…”

Well the bottle in my hand was practically brand new and almost full… I once heard some guy say that you can’t overdose on shit like this, but really, you can overdose on anything with enough will, right?

A surprisingly shaky breath left me suddenly and I felt my heartbeat picking up a bit. I wasn’t sure why. Or maybe I was…

I closed the cabinet while tightly clenching the small, white bottle in my hand, and looked at myself in the mirror again.

I hated myself at that moment. I hated myself so fucking much. Not Jason, not Dave, but me. For not being what I strived to be, what my parents always wanted me to be, what my friends expected me to be, what my religion required me to be. For not being the strong, witty, confident guy that the society wanted to see me as. I was a failure in so many different ways. 

Under my fake facade I was scared, confused, lonely, desperate, and no one wanted to see that. No one cared. In my dreams Jason did, but why would he ever even look at me in real life? No one would ever want to deal with my shit, not even me.

Sometimes I had thoughts about what would’ve happened if the accident had taken me instead of Cliff. No one would even remember me for who I was. They’d cry, sure, but they’d cry over the public image that went away with me. The actual, real, pathetic me. And maybe that would’ve been for the better…

Thinking about all that shit made a lump start forming in my throat and I tightly squeezed my eyes shut when my vision started getting blurry and watery. I would not fucking cry, I haven’t fallen that low… Who am I kidding?

I leaned against the cold sink with my free hand and bent down a little, taking a few deep breaths. I kept telling myself to calm the fuck down and stop acting like a baby in my mind, but it wasn’t helping. Those self-destructive thoughts just kept spinning in my head and they were stronger than me.

A choked sob left me, coming from deep inside my throat. I couldn’t have contained it no matter how hard I tried. Thinking about it, I wasn’t even sure what exactly I was crying about, there was no one reason for it, I just needed to release all the frustration that was pent up in me.

So I cried. Fucking sobbed like a complete loser, tears spilling out my tightly shut eyes and running down my cheeks and nose, then falling to the cold tiles beneath me.

In all honesty, I cried because I needed it. There was no other way to release all the shit that was fucking eating me from inside every day. I couldn’t talk with anyone, I couldn’t gather my own emotions anymore and I could certainly never seek professional help. Not necessarily because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t take the shame.

But they had a treatment for this, right? Conversion therapy or whatever they called it. Maybe that could help me? Sure doc, hook me up with some electrodes and shock me whenever I think about dicks. That’ll work. That’ll make me normal again.

The thought only made the pain grow worse somehow. I realized that I was ill. I needed to be treated. I needed help. Help that I couldn’t get, because no one could know that there’s something wrong with me in the first place. It’s a never ending circle of desperation and misery, and there is no way out.

Well, there was one. I was holding it in my hand, a whole bottle of a way out. One last bottoms up and it would all finally end. But what good would that bring me? Shit, I wouldn’t even get to see Cliff afterwards. He went to heaven, no doubt about it. I wouldn’t. I’ve heard that they have a pretty strict ‘No faggots allowed’ rule up there. 

That made a bitter laugh leave my lips. At nothing in particular, just the hilarity of this whole situation. How do you screw up your life so badly that there’s literally not a single way out?

I took a shaky breath and ran my hand through my hair, giving myself a minute to calm down, then opened my eyes again and blinked away the last tears, making a few spill out through the corners of my eyes.

After quickly wiping away some of the wetness from my cheeks with the back of my hand, I straightened up again and took another look at the mirror.

Not exactly the Mighty Hetfield they all knew and loved. Eyes red and puffy from crying, a running nose, lips slightly parted for quick and shallow breaths to pass through. A fucking mess. A wimp. A pussy. Wait, no, scrap that last one. Calling myself a pussy while thinking about how much I disliked myself was a tad bit ironic, considering the reason for that self-hatred. 

My look trailed down to what I was holding in my hand again. To hell with that shit… I opened the bottle and took out a single pill that I quickly swallowed before throwing the bottle back into the cabinet. I almost felt weirdly proud of myself for it. For having a fucking mental breakdown that didn’t end in suicide. That’s probably just what waking up early does to people…

A quick splash of water on my face didn’t change a damn thing, I was aware of that, but I still did it before walking back to my bedroom and sitting down on the edge of the bed. It was much lighter outside, so I probably spent quite a bit more time dealing with my ‘emotions’ in the bathroom like a freaking chick than I thought. 

I was almost afraid to look at the clock on the wall, but it was inevitable. 9:46am. Fucking great, I was almost late. And today was an ‘important’ day. We were heading for the Reseda Country Club to play our very first gig with Jason. Lovely isn’t it?

We had a few more sessions at the studio with him and they went disgustingly well. Lars and Kirk got along with him and he blended into our sound perfectly. Even the fucking sound engineers liked him and sound engineers don’t like anyone.

Nope, it was just me. A lone soldier in a field against the guy he has wet dreams about. It would be quite funny if it wasn’t so tragic, wouldn’t it?

It’s not like I couldn’t see why they liked him, he was friendly, nice, helpful, fun. Everyone had a good time around him, he never got in the way. Well he got in my fucking way. By taking up Cliff’s place as if he could properly fill it and just by being… well, himself.

And so fucking what that he filled up the emptiness that was practically fucking tangible in the studio after Cliff’s passing with constant positivity and jokes? I simply didn’t want him there. Why was he so hard to hate?

On the bright side, he didn’t try to talk to me even once through that whole time, most of the time he didn’t even look at me, and just generally avoided me almost as much as I avoided him. It was better for both of us that way, for however long he’d stay in the band.

And here we come to the point why today bothered me so damn much. I still liked to think of his place in Metallica as temporary, but this fucking show felt very much like a point of no return. No return for us, to pick a different bassist, and no return for my fucking sanity. After this it will be it. Everyone will find out about him. I will no longer be able to get rid of him with no buzz. 

I ran my hands over my face and sighed into my palms. It all felt like things were moving too fast and I couldn’t do shit to stop them. There’s that feeling of powerlessness again.

Even if I did manage to convince Lars and Kirk to wait a little longer, the label would still force us to introduce Jason as quickly as possible and continue the tour. There was no way in hell that they would allow us to ‘slack off’ much longer ‘for no good reason’. Motherfuckers…

Just as I was about to fall back on the bed again and maybe have at least a half an hour more of blissful sleep, the phone rang downstairs. I groaned at the thought of who it was, knowing exactly what he would say, and almost thought about ignoring him and not picking up, but then the second call would be even worse.

I took a deep breath and went downstairs to answer the phone. It was a good thing that Lars was a persistent motherfucker and didn’t just give up after a few signals, so I actually made it.

“Hello…”

“When the fuck are you planning to show up?!” I rolled my eyes.

“Sorry man, I was a bit busy with crying in my bathroom and having suicidal thoughts.” My mom taught me to never lie.

“Ha ha, very funny, James.” Yes it is funny, my life is a fucking joke. “When are you planning to show up?”

“Soon.” 

“We’re leaving in less than an hour.” 

I quickly went through all the stuff that I still had to do and the amount of time it would take me to get to Kirk’s place from where we were leaving. There was no way that I was gonna make it in that amount of time, but it’s not like he didn’t know that already.

“So what are you gonna do, leave without me and find a new vocalist along the way?” I could practically feel his frown from the other end of the line.

“You’re a real fucking asshole, did you know that?”

“Yeah, you might’ve mentioned it. Bye.”

I put the phone back in its place and yawned into my fist. This day was off to a good start.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason was looking at me expectantly and I knew that I had to speak if I didn’t want to appear like an idiot. That is, if I cared about appearing like an idiot in front of him. Which I didn’t. So I just opened my mouth and let out the first thing that came to mind. “I’ll pay you.”

My face was pressed against the cold glass of a car window as we were moving through the plainest, most hideous scenery I’ve ever see. A few scattered trees, patches of grass in the otherwise dried out land and a rock or two that could qualify for hills, I guess, if you stretched your imagination. Mind-numbing and boring were the only descriptions that I could come up for it.

Lucky for me, it had probably rained that night, so for a while I had the time of my life following drops of water as they slid down the window, but even that soon ended as they dried off or were blown away, so I went back to watching Mother Nature at its dullest.

At that moment I almost regretted telling Kirk to turn off the damn radio after it played the fifth Mötley Crüe song since we took off, because even that shit was better than silence. Kirk wasn’t too happy, he was behind the wheel and wanted full control over the radio, but all it really took was mentioning that it was Lars’ fault that I wasn’t driving. He gave in right away, purely just to avoid an argument. Kirk was a peacemaker among us and it didn’t really work in his advantage most of the time.

It’s not like I was wrong anyway, it was Lars’ fault that I had to sit in the passenger’s seat. As soon as I made it to Kirk’s place, I instantly declared myself as the driver. That’s what I always did whenever we weren’t taking the tour bus and we wouldn’t be taking any tour buses for a long freaking time, so it only made sense for me to drive.

Lars didn’t think so. He gave me one look and tossed the keys to Kirk, mumbling something about how I looked horrible and how he wouldn’t let me drive with a hangover. Fucking asshole, isn’t he? For once in my life I wasn’t lying when I said that I didn’t drink, but he didn’t believe me. I couldn’t blame him...

So Kirk was driving and I was sitting on his right with nothing to do. Right behind me was Lars who was staring through the window just as aimlessly as me, but at least he had his walkman with him. I wasn’t considerate like that. Silly me, thinking that we could hold a basic conversation between the three of us.

Well, four... Jason was sitting behind Kirk, his arms crossed on his chest and his eyes closed. It looked like he was asleep. Because of course he could sleep just fine. Of course he could wake up at an ungodly hour, get to Kirk’s place on time, be his usual, nice and cheerful self, and even volunteer to load mine and Kirk’s guitars along with his own bass into the van. Of course.

What a fucking hero, our knight in shining armour. I would’ve liked to see him being so kind and helpful if we actually had to drag our full gear with us. Now that I thought about it, “forgetting” to mention that the place we were playing at had its own amps and a decent drum set would’ve been a good prank. Why do good ideas always come to me when it’s too late...?

I sighed and shifted in my seat, not being able to find a comfortable position for possibly passing out as well, cause the seats in this damn thing felt like they were made of stone. It only pissed me off further and I gave up, hopefully looking out through the window for any signs about a nearby gas station. The car ride had probably only lasted a few hours at that point, but it felt at least an eternity or two longer and I wanted to get out of that fucking car. I felt irritated for whatever reason.

By some miracle luck was on my side for once and soon a sign popped up on the side of the road, letting us know that there was a gas station ahead. I wasn’t gonna miss this chance.

“Dude, pull over at the next gas station.” Kirk briefly glanced at me, looking confused.

“For what? The tank’s full, we have enough gas to go there and back again.” A silhouette of a small building appeared in the distance and I sat up straight from my slumped down position.

“I need to piss, drank too much coffee this morning.” Another glance from Kirk.

“Right, coffee.” This time I turned to him as well. 

“What, are you gonna give me a lecture about how I’m an irredeemable alcoholic too?” He just shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road.

“I don’t know, you tell me.”

Was I? A week ago I would’ve said yes. There was no way around it and I couldn’t bullshit myself, I had a problem. I mean, how many musicians don’t at my age? But with me it was different. I stopped drinking to have fun long ago. I started drinking to forget the sorrow. To shut up the inner voice inside of me that kept calling me a freak. A nice bottle of Jägermeister usually drowned it out real good. 

But over the past week... I didn’t know what changed. I didn’t drink as much. The pain never went away, but I no longer used alcohol to numb it. Or not as often. Instead I suffered and I wasn’t exactly sure why. During the nights I’d look at all the bottles lined up at home and almost feel tempted to reach for them, but never would. I’d tell myself that there’s gonna be rehearsal tomorrow morning and just... wouldn’t drink.

Sure, I barely got enough sleep during that week and went to the studio looking like a living corpse, making everyone think that I was suffering through a bitch of a hangover, but at least I could honestly say that things were changing. I didn’t know why or how, but they were and so for the first time in a while I could answer that question with something other than a definite ‘yes’.

“Maybe. I don’t fucking know, but today I’m sober, believe it or not.” We drove up to the gas station and Kirk slowed down, turning the wheel to the right.

“Let’s say that I do.” 

And I was fucking grateful for that. I had no idea if he was being completely honest when he said it, he might’ve thought that I’m a pathetic fucking liar in his head, but boy did it feel nice to hear someone expressing some kind of confidence in you once in a while. Confidence that I maybe didn’t deserve, but I sure as hell needed it.

The moment we turned towards the shabby building that had clearly seen better times, Lars finally moved from his frozen position. I felt his legs that were previously leaning against my seat moving away and heard the click of a button as he paused the song that he was listening to.

“Why are we stopping?” Kirk turned off the engine and looked at Lars through the rear-view mirror.

“James needs to take a leak.” Oh, I could practically feel the displeasure in Lars’ face...

“Make it quick, we don’t have time for stops. There’s a fuck-ton of stuff that has to be done at the venue after we arrive.” 

I rolled my eyes. On one hand we were the luckiest motherfuckers out there to have someone like Lars in our band. On the other hand, he got fucking annoying sometimes. I turned back in my seat, so I could see him.

“Relax, fifteen minutes off the road won’t kill us.” 

Lars wanted to say something else, but before he could, I opened the door and stepped out. I could briefly hear him mumbling something about how he’ll go get some coffee and snacks for the road. That was followed by Kirk’s complaining about how the van was rented and we couldn’t get crumbs or other shit all over it. Finally the last voice I heard was Jason’s as he woke up and asked what was going on.

That’s when the car left my earshot. I approached the building with my hands stuffed into the pockets of my jacket and quickly went around the corner to get behind it. I actually had zero need to piss, I just needed to get away and be in silence for a while.

An odd wish, considering that there was nothing but silence in the car, but I needed to get away from the other guys. Jason in particular. That entire morning he bothered me. By doing nothing, really, but he did. The thought that after today he would inevitably stay with us bothered me even more...

As I waited at Kirk’s place for him to gather all the stuff, I thought of a few ways that I could get rid of him. There were multiple options spinning in my head, but I was running out of time and that was making me feel anxious. 

One thing was for sure- he had to leave by himself. Maybe with a little encouragement... If I tried to force him out, Lars and Kirk would probably interfere and then I’d become even more of a bad guy. Not good, not good at all. Nothing in this fucking situation was good, it was slowly driving me nuts. That’s exactly why I needed peace and quiet, at least for fifteen minutes.

I rounded the corner and was a little surprised to see a man standing there. He looked to be in his forties, your average everyday redneck, and wore a shirt with a name tag on it, so I assumed he worked there. He was smoking and barely spared me a look when I showed up and simply leaned against the wall, without saying a thing. 

Right then and there I got exactly what I wanted. The sound of nothing. Sure, there was wind, faint echoes of music coming from the store that managed to seep through the walls and the man’s slow pacing, which made a light sound of footsteps on the concrete, but it was nothing that I couldn’t drown out. I instantly felt better and briefly thought if the others would notice or even mind if I simply didn’t show up again and just stayed there. It sounded fucking tempting if you asked me.

“Hey, kid?” The gravelly voice startled me and I flinched slightly, quickly turning to the man on my right. He was looking at me with a somewhat disinterested look and outstretching his pack of cigarettes my way. “Want a smoke?”

I didn’t usually smoke. Usually. On occasion I would and it didn’t take me long to notice its calming effects. There was something about the repetitive motion and the smoke circulating in your lungs. Just what I needed at the moment.

“Yeah, thanks.” I pulled out one cigarette from the pack and the guy lit it for me, outstretching his right hand immediately after.

“I’m Terry.” Not feeling one bit of desire to get to know him, I reached as well out and gave him a brief handshake.

“James.” He nodded and just as I started fearing the conversation that would follow, Terry simply turned and stepped to the side again, putting the same distance between us as before.

I caught myself before sighing in relief and resumed my position against the wall, taking the first drag of the cigarette. At first it was always a little unpleasant, the feeling of smoke filling my lungs and replacing fresh air, but that was just cause I didn’t smoke very often. A few more drags and the feeling was gone, allowing nicotine to do its wonderful job in my body. This shit wasn’t good for my voice, but who really cared?

When about half the cigarette was finished, I saw Terry putting out his own from the corner of my eye. He quickly spat beside himself and walked passed me, presumably back to work. Alone at last.

I blew out some smoke and lowered myself to the ground, sitting down on the pavement. It wasn’t exactly clean, but neither were my jeans. I took a long breath and leaned my head back against the wall. This was... nice. It felt nice to just empty my head for the first time in what felt like forever. 

To not think about who I wanted to bang more, the stress of touring, the pressure of coming up with new material, drinking that wasn’t exactly in my control anymore or, more recently, the passing of Cliff. To just shut off my mind. 

My eyes focused on some faint buildings on the horizon where some small town probably was. I wasn’t sure though, my eyesight wasn’t the best. Not that it mattered, I just needed something to stare at and the vague forms were good enough.

I didn’t know how long I sat like that, with my mind blissfully empty, but the cigarette was getting shorter way faster than I would’ve liked and I briefly thought that I should’ve asked that Terry guy for two. 

Just as my precious moment of peace was coming to an end, something, or rather someone, blocked the sun in front of me. 

“Hey, uh... You’re here.” 

I didn’t really need to turn, I recognized that fucking voice way too well for my liking. Just as he was out of my thoughts for a few, amazing minutes... God, I would’ve rather stared at the freaking sun instead. ‘At least the sun wouldn’t make me hard’, was what, disturbingly enough, flashed through my mind. Gross.

I turned to Jason and gave him what I hoped to be a dismissing look.

“Aren’t you clever.” He just frowned and it looked like he wanted to say something back, but for some reason he didn’t. 

“Lars said to hurry up or you’ll have to walk to Reseda on foot. His words, not mine.” 

I saw his eyes briefly leaving my face and darting to the cigarette in my hand, then immediately back again. His expression didn’t really give away if he was bothered by the fact that I was smoking or not, but I took another drag just in case.

“What are you, his messenger?”

“No, him and Kirk are still inside, making coffee. Since I was the only one who wasn’t doing anything, he asked me to go find you.” 

I snorted, more to myself than to Jason. Just because I was openly being an asshole to him, didn’t mean that the other two sometimes weren’t. They were just more... discreet about it, so to speak. If ordering someone around like a freaking dog whenever they needed something done could be called that. 

“So basically you are.” Jason’s look turned to something that I would almost call pissed off, if it wasn’t for his otherwise calm face.

“Whatever...” 

With that he turned to leave and right at that moment my mind suddenly got back to my previous thoughts. About getting rid of him. There’s no better day to start than today, right? Or however that fucking saying goes...

“Hey, wait!” Jason paused and turned to me halfway, his expression clearly showing that he didn’t give a flying fuck about what I wanted to say. Well bad news for him. “We need to talk.”

His eyebrows furrowed and he turned to me more as I lifted myself off the ground and tossed the almost finished cigarette by my feet, stepping on it to put it out.

“About what?” 

I quickly weighed the options in my head. There were a few concerns that I needed to address and I knew what they were just a few hours. At that moment though? No idea, just one big cloud of frustration over Jason’s existence in general lingering in my head. 

He was looking at me expectantly and I knew that I had to speak if I didn’t want to appear like an idiot. That is, if I cared about appearing like an idiot in front of Jason. Which I didn’t. So I just opened my mouth and let out the first thing that came to mind.

“I’ll pay you.” His expression slowly morphed from mild curiosity and annoyance to confusion.

“For what?” 

Seriously, for what? I had a strategy that involved giving him money, I remembered that much, but all of a sudden I couldn’t piece it together anymore. Not when he was looking at me like that... And so I grasped for straws.

“For keeping your mouth shut about what happened between us and leaving the band.” 

There was silence. Drawn out, beyond awkward silence as he looked at me with blank eyes, almost like he didn’t understand what I was trying to say. Finally he just lightly shook his head. Why did his fucking hair have to sway like that every time he moved?

“I don’t need your money.” That just made me roll my eyes. He was still going with the whole ‘I’m not in this for the money’ bullshit.

“Yeah, right, you don’t need money. I guess you’re just pursuing a hobby here?” 

Jason’s jaw clenched slightly. Just the smallest hint of anger. He was now standing straight in front of me, one hand shoved into a pocket of his jacket while the other was picking at a loose strand sticking out of a hole in his jeans.

“I already told you why I’m here.” 

His voice was sharper than usual, even if still husky as all fucking hell. At that point he was like half a step away from me. I didn’t know how that happened, might’ve even been my fault, but it was way too close for my liking, so I did the only logical thing in that situation and leaned in even closer.

“And I don’t fucking believe you.” 

Shit, I could actually see the anger flashing in his eyes from so up close. Wait, anger flashing in his eyes? What kind of gay shit was that...

“That’s you problem, not mine.” 

And just like that, any stupid ideas that might’ve appeared in my head because of how fucking close we were got stopped as Jason stepped back. 

I... I didn’t really know why I did what I did next. Personally, I blamed Terry and his sketchy-ass cigarettes. There must’ve been something wrong with them, because why else would I have grabbed Jason by the wrist just as he was about to walk away?

He instantly looked up at me with wide eyes, but I was honestly more confused by the whole situation than he was. There was a long moment of us just looking at each other and my brain was practically overheating as it searched for an explanation, a reason for why I was almost holding him like this.

“Uh... James?” 

Why did he need to fucking rush me... I could feel my hand getting sweaty around his slim wrist. Why wasn’t I letting go exactly?

“If... If you even think about telling anyone about what happened...”

I cursed myself in my head. What would I fucking do to him if he told anyone? Nothing. Fucking nothing. I would live with the humiliation for the rest of my life, however long I chose it to be. I could do nothing to stop him...

That stirred up something on the inside that almost turned into a full on panic attack. I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t kick him out. This was it. I had no more hope to escape what happened. To be normal. He would be accepted into the band and I had no way to put that shit in reverse. 

At that moment in my head, my whole world was going to shit, but somehow I managed to hide it good enough for Jason not to notice. He just fell back into his previous, annoyed expression.

“Seriously, this shit again? I won’t tell anyone, relax. It’s not that big of a deal anyway.” 

Oh... Well that hit me. Not that big of a deal? It was not that big of a deal? Maybe to him it wasn’t, as he was probably fucked in the ass by a different guy every night. But to me it was. I couldn’t fucking sleep, I couldn’t hold down a relationship, I couldn’t get him out of my head ever since he decided to show up in my life out of freaking nowhere again. It was a very fucking big deal.

The whole stream of panic, fear and a shit-ton of other different emotions stopped in my head. There was only one left, one that I knew all too well and one that I could handle.

My grip around his wrist unconsciously tightened and I tilted my head slightly.

“For a faggot like you maybe it isn’t, but I have an image to uphold.” 

That’s when something that I didn’t expect happened. Jason’s look turned cold. His whole face shifted into a frown. He suddenly seemed downright furious. I could feel him twisting his wrist in my hand slightly.

“Look, I don’t know what kind of repressed sexual issues do you have, but leave me the fuck out of it. I’ve done nothing wrong to you. It’s not my fault that you enjoyed having your tongue down my throat years ago.” 

With that he suddenly yanked his wrist out of my fingers and, with one last glance, walked away hurriedly, as if afraid that I’ll chase after him. I didn’t even consider doing that though, all that I could think about was ‘What the fuck just happened?’

I guess I just got too used to Jason taking whatever I had to say to him. Ignoring my insults and just bowing his head whenever I felt like flipping out on him about something. So this... this was new. And interesting. Definitely interesting.

The worst part was the he was kind of right... He didn’t do anything to deserve the way I treated him. And I knew it, deep down inside, but having it spat right into my face like that was entirely different. I felt... Shit, I felt guilty. 

Or I would’ve felt guilty if some sick part of me wouldn’t have tried to put all the blame on him again. He was always free to leave if he didn’t like my behaviour. I offered him freaking money for it and he declined. That was his problem not mine. 

But on the other hand...

“James, you’re coming or not?”

My head snapped up and I came back to reality as I heard Kirk’s voice. Right, there were more things to deal with in life than my stupid crush. I mean, not a crush, just... Yeah, whatever. 

With one last look at the spot where I was calmly sitting just minutes before, I walked back around the corner and into the parking lot. Everyone was in the car already.

I felt more than a bit of reluctance to sit in that freaking box on wheels for another few hours, but there was not much I could do. As I sat down, my look unconsciously lingered on Jason for a brief moment. He was back in his seat, his eyes fixated on something outside of the window. No traces of what just happened. Good for him...

Lars pushed some magazine into my hands to keep me ‘entertained’ and I murmured him a quick thanks. I didn’t really need it, honestly. I had more than enough shit to entertain my empty head for the rest of the trip.


End file.
